Crushed Purple

The passageway was dark- he didn't know if he would ever find his way back again. But he knew that he had to keep going. He knew that the story had a way for him to go. The idea was at first terrifying, then exciting and liberating. All he had to do was follow. He didn't really have to create, to lead. All the characters and situations were already there, if he would wait for them to come to him. The same was true for every writer. In fact he knew then that anyone could be a great writer, the art was in receiving the ideas, not in trying to tighten his brain to squeeze them out in brick force. Editing was the horrible evil he had always though it was as well, it was doubting the Creator himself really. Certainly there could be misspelling corrected, just as a musician didn't want to play wrong notes. Now he was worrying about the title, but what did it matter? Hadn't all of the clear symbols been used to the point where they were already boring? What difference did it make whether or not one more hack used a snaky reference to adam and eve again or not? If there were any symbols of any important, the Guiding Hand would help him with them anyway, and he could see them when he bought the book on the stands along with everyone else.

He went left and went up the battered lime steps. It looked like they had been there a 100 years ago. Maybe all the great dignitaries of the bum kingdoms had touched their feet to them, He saw an extra large cockroach scurry away from him as he opened the metal latch in his mailbox. The only letter inside was a large manila envelope with a department of defense label on it. He hesitated, and then grabbed the envelope and was embarrassed about his own foolishness. He went into his room and collapsed into the cushioned chair. It was a beautiful afternoon, full of ozone air, but he couldn't think of anything to do. Then he remembered the envelope and opened. There was some odd smell to it that he couldn't place. Inside he found a note, that looked something but not entirely like a form letter." Dear Sir, we regret to inform you that you do not have the background for any of the positions that we have open at this time." At first he felt some shock, but then almost immediately after that he felt exuberance. He was free! He couldn't believe that he was going to fall for that stupid slavery all for the security of a position and then of course to persuade some naive but beautiful girl to marry him. If there was a the right girl for him shouldn't she just love him and maybe even be his friend, through thick and thin, regardless of his "financial status"? Even if everyone else got married just so they would have someone to take care of them, he was going to stay independent.

He decided to leave, get in the car and do whatever the hell he felt like doing and try not to feel wrong about it. It was great to have a job that he could dispose of in a few hours, although he didn't want anyone else to find out about it, because they might want to make him feel guilty about it. Out the door and down the street towards the car. Once he was in the car, he decided to head to the bookstore. He was driving too fast, but didn't care. He wasn't running anyone over. He could learn languages. He could be a professor, he could be a writer, it really didn't matter, just so he could be free to pursue what his mind wanted to do, not to please someone else's thinking.

It was quiet in the bookstore. He went to look at the language section. There was someone in the section that he wanted to go to. He didn't have any patience and decided to leave. He wanted freedom and movement above everything.

The energy was running out on the way home as it really began sink that he didn't do anything except waste some more gas. It was still a beautiful day. He was starting to feel nostalgic again. Why not. There was no harm in living in the past. He had to live somewhere- in the past or the present or the future. Maybe those who insisted that you had to live in the present just didn't have the memory to live in the past or the imagination to live in the future. He knew one thing for sure: he didn't want to live in their present. She was such a beautiful girl, but they were not made for each other. He didn't want to be mean, but she was not really bright enough to follow him. She had admitted as much herself. But she was a sweet girl. He had done the best thing by allowing her to break up with him. He was not a bundle of presents himself. But sometimes he could and would travel back in his mind to remember how she held him and how they had this world together, when nothing including nuclear Holocaust had mattered except for the world that they shared together, the love and the sadness that he felt when they watched the sun set on that clear summer afternoon. Wasn't it too painful in the end to get completely lost in the past? He always ended up in pain. But it was a beautiful pain. It didn't matter, just so he kept going.

There was a world to the words that could be as good or better than any other kind of world. Usually he stayed in the worlds of ideas and emotions, but there was a pleasure to words alone. Words could paint and they would have to do, because he could never paint. Now he wanted to race away into that world of words and never come back. What would they think? Would they care? Did anyone ever really care? He though people were looking for reinforcement of their own ideas, or they seemed to care out of some kind of duty or responsibility, but that in the end, others only cared about themselves, it had something to do with the basic definition of an individual. We are separate until the end. People could sometimes be good fun until that point arrived though.

He missed a turn that he wanted to make and turned around in the middle of a street with not too much traffic in it. There was a near miss by someone who surprised him pulling on from another street. He smiled at his good fortune. The quality of the Sun was the very same that it had been when he was a child, and he was wracking his brain trying to figure out why that was. Must have been because of the time of year. Those beautiful paintings of dinosaurs.

There was a jolt.He had and awareness of pain without the sensation of pain, and then there was nothing but darkness.