Chapter Something or Other

The world was twice my playground.

He stared up at the ceiling. Of all the things he did well, staring was at the top of that list. In the Olympics of staring, he would've taken gold.

He stared up at the ceiling. It began to move, left to right, like reading the world. The world was drunk, not he. And thoughts came and went. They were drunk, not he.

Manhattan.

Everyone is scrunched together; and yet they all hate each other. One thousand years from now they write the following about Manhattan in the Encyclopedia of History:

"Manhattan was a place where millions of people lived in a space barely suited for thousands. They scrunched together like animals forced into far too small a cage. They bumped into one another, because there simply was never enough room. Shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, one on top of another, and all of them so scared that the one to the left or front or the one on the other's head was going to take from them something. No evidence has yet been uncovered as to the reasoning behind the arrangement."

Looking up at the ceiling.

I wondered. I want so badly to rise above the mediocrity. I want so badly to appear that I do. I want to badly to be great.

He wanted so badly to become fantastic.

But I couldn't help him. Not this time. Because this time, there was no answer. He simply had to reconcile the fact that there was no saving those who did not want to be saved.

And there you may find the quintessential problem.

The problem is not something to be verbalized.

The problem is not something to which there is a solution.

He wrote. He drank. He hated and loved and felt.

But he was not great.

And as he wrote, I thought to myself: am I great. What do I care? Nobody recognizes greatness. Nobody even knows what to look for.

He decided to have another shot, whether of his liquor or someone else's.