February 1, 2004

• I wanted to write something beautiful. I wanted to pull the fog out of the morning and let it cover your mind like the lake just before sunrise.

  I wanted to take the smell of the forest floor and the taste of hot coffee from a thermos where you packed it because you knew you'd be here in the mountains at dawn... I wanted to take the feeling you get when you're laughing with your friends at stupid jokes, and the profundity that stakes itself through you like a circus tent peg, driven through the very top of your head right down through and into the ground, all the way to the center of the earth. The unfolding thoracic rose blossom of heartbreak. The orange peel acid of surprise. I wanted to take these things and put them in a box, a tiny box, the kind you think might have a diamond ring in it. A box tinier than any the world has ever known.

  I wanted to take those things and put them in the tiniest box and wrap it with microscopic ribbons, because they're the only ones that will fit. I wanted to make a package you only have to breathe on and it disappears because it's so fragile and delicate.

  I wanted to take this tiny package with the microscopic ribbons and hold it on my outstretched palm, and give it to you as a surprise. And this is a measure of how cleverness will be my downfall, because I'll know that if you breathe on it, it will float away along with the moisture of your breath, and if you think I want to shake hands, it will be crushed, obliterated. And if you think I'm offering you nothing, you will have totally missed the point.

  And then I'd know.

  • 6:41 am
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