Today's crap is bad. I try not to give warnings, but if you have anything better to do--like cut your toenails or count the grains in your hourglass--I suggest you do it and not waste time with the following words.

I’m back at it. I sit in a construction area and wait for them to build something. It’s not in me. Foamy inspiration refuses to assault me, and I have no alternate plans. Backhoes push up the earthly remains of earthworms and bugs, and I feel my iron-girded resolve under its shovel. Where is the time for grass to grow? Hoses and soap buds move beyond my reach. I have nothing—that’s a word I’m playing with, tossing it about as if I could create its meaning through dedication, thoughts that make little sense, and words that if I translated would sound more like guttural growls than wishful thinking. Balls of light hang from overhead and I wait for memories to assail me. They will, with a little prodding and a little caffeine, and time. My fingers, moving of their own accord, will begin to think on their own, and images will coalesce before them. I hope to identify with them and want to share those words . . . or not.

A penny sits on its head on the retched green floor. Showing tails, that is.

I’m back downtown. It was a mistake coming here. My coffee smells vaguely of sweat, and I wonder whose sweat. Little is done today except for the monkey’s pushing of keys. If I walk up a mountain, should I slide or jump down?

Who are my influences? Do I know what an influence is? I read about how artists (I almost mistakenly said “other artists”) are influenced by authors, movies, strange people walking down the street. In a way, I am as well, although it is at a lower level of consciousness. I don’t think through what I read. I don’t analyze it for influences or for how it changes me. I appreciate it as all readers appreciate good writing, but I don’t delve deeper. My only depth is jealousy, a jealousy firmly planted in its genius. My writing changes for a moment as my voice takes on the style of the great work. But to say that the changes are for good is laughable.

I need influences and analysis, which brings me back to my needs for original thought. I am going to stop calling it that, OT. There is no such thing as original thought because people have thought all thoughts worth thinking under the sun. What I try to do is pick up their pieces and hawk them as my own.

The danger? I run into a fire sale on thoughts and nobody wants to buy.

And so I struggle. I make out my struggles as if they were epic, as if the whole world waited in balance to see if I could push out a few more words. If only the world revolved around me as it does in my own small mind.

Struggles. A gaggle of monsters walk into the house.

The world spins and I try to slow it with my hand, but the continents scrape my hands raw.

Juggernauts walk the streets. They sit for a spot of tea before they continue to reek havoc on the hard-hat population. I give up and walk the streets.

I’m back from obscurity. I sit in a comfortable leather chair and prepare myself for an epiphany.

Instead of talking, why don’t you write?

I’m drained today, more drained than I thought I would be after yesterday’s efforts. Words come to me but ideas remain out of my reach. Nothing runs through my mind. How about I tell a simple tail about a mouse.

Jimmy the mouse lived in the walls of a brownstone in Brooklyn. He lived with his small family, who chewed through the wall. His ancestors had made a nice home for Jimmy and his family, and he included them in his prayers every night. Living in the house with Jimmy was a young couple and a small boy. When they first moved in, his family had been up in paws, afraid that they would bring with them a dog or cat that would ruin their run of the house. The family didn’t have any pets, and after a few weeks, the mice settled down and chewed contently through the wood, enlarging their home in the walls.

“You have an idea?”

“Yes,” she said. Her face lit, her green eyes grew, and she breathed in small, shallow breaths.

“Well?”

“Peanut butter loves jelly.”

“And?”

“I mean it loves jelly.”

“This is brilliant?”

Why does it say nothing? I’ve had enough in the way of caring, but now I’m in the way of doing. Zilch, there’s nothing here for me. Why can’t I come up with anything to say? I don’t understand where it’s going to take me. It doesn’t make any sense! Why would I come here, spend the whole day pushing at my brain, only to have it push back, as the balloon against the press of a finger? Consternations piled on consternations. Oh, the pain!

I’ve written so many words and said nothing. Where do we go for the night on the run?

She waited for the bus in the brown enclosure. It was late and she waited for the last bus of the evening. It was cold and she wasn’t dressed for it. She held her pocketbook close, and leaned over the curb to search for the bus. A man stood by the bus stop with her.

Since when do horizons rise over the last of the nights? Do we have to put out the evenings gray to hide from where they came? I wait until the night and then I find that we can do it; we can wave gray waves over buses of night. The flag didn’t move. What is my fascination with waving? I waited and could not be here for here we go there I don’t know. Key is in the night. Why do I care if he had something to tell me? The night’s waiting. I waited for it, but I don’t know.

Such senseless words. I’m typing to say nothing and nothing is said. I’m not frustrated, I just hoped for a better outcome, but I didn’t expect one. I’m like that. I know I want something, as caffeine surges through my veins, but I don’t know what I want. This is pathetic.

All stories have less exciting parts. I have to remember that. I think each part of my story must be exciting or emotional. My only requirement should be that the story moves forward in some way, revealing information or setting the scene, or doing something. Nothing more. Without slower parts, there can be nothing exciting or moving.