CHAIN

“To feel the pleasant cool spot of my own finger poised against my cheek, to savor everything a little, laugh when the crazy pampas grass stalk in my car lurched softly into my face, to pull my wool cap down to my eyebrows and rejoice that I’d found it on the seat of my car, to whistle Elton John’s ‘Yellow Brick Road’ and actually hit the high notes, to recall Ellen’s and Laurie’s joy at having me back at school, their almost forgetting to greet me with the usual, ‘Hi, Mrs. Coconut Ketchup Sandwich.’

“Slowing at the stop sign at Clayton Road on the way to the restaurant and wondering if I would be able to write tonight, feeling scared, like everything was hanging out, scared of my arrogance in assuming I would be able to write just because I’d made up my mind to, knowing that’s folly, that moods of confidence pass and I can’t honor the commitments I make in those moods.

“Ah, what can I say? I feel like I could write a novel—that the words are links in a chain extending from this page back into the most obscure recesses of my mind, and that by pulling hand over hand, I could eventually bring to light something astonishing.

“And how everything gives me pleasure—the gesture with which I pull open the prongs of a binder and slide out a new page, the sight of my own body as I curl in a hot tub. Today, I’m not embarrassed by excesses—my imperfect animality delights me. I feel pulses of power, a half-awaited something coming true.”