There’s nothing quite like the smell of summer during spring. Glancing through my last few story fragments, I find little worth saving. I have to get out of the funk. It feels like my years of consternation while in Houston, where I’d sit in the bucks of stars and type complaints. I complain too much. It’s the Brooklyn in me, the Brooklyn and the Jew. I haven’t run out of things I want to say, I’ve run out of ways to say it. I keep telling myself that I’m transitioning, moving from one style to another. I like to lie to myself. It makes me feel better.

First step: get over the boredom. I need to accept the boredom as a technique. The fatigue is not helping. I’m tired of writing. I feel like I need a break and I know if I take the break, I might not return. It won’t happen, of course. I’m not going to take the break, only wish I could and continue to torture myself. I have yet to take this beyond my experiences. I wonder if I am capable. I don’t see things in my heads. Actually, I do.

I let the couch surround me. I close my eyes slowly, watching my eyelids cover my vision like window shades. My breathing slows and I enter my room. The room is round with white walls and a spherical ceiling. I walk across the thick black rug and the strands sneak between my toes, massaging my foot with each step. I walk to the black reading chair and oversized ottoman in the middle of the room. I recline in the chair and swing my legs over the ottoman. I reach for the white mug of steaming mocha on the iron-wrought table next to the chair. I suck some of the whipped cream to create a hole through which I drink the mocha. I place the mug back on the table and a thin layer of whipped cream reforms over the hole. I look through the two circular windows on the spherical wall in front of me. The room darkens as I watch the night sky through the windows until the windows become my eyes filling my vision with the nightscape. Calmness descends over me and then everything goes black.

I need to see things in my head before I write, like the athlete who pictures her performance before beginning. It’s an exercise in imagination and creation, similar to my throwing of words onto the page without thought to warm up.

Try and trial. Imaging the twilight setting. He makes an argument. I foreswore logic years ago. Present reasoning and storytelling. What? Such difficulty, said over the evening capitals. Silence rises over terrifying obstacles. Tell the story. What stories do I have to tell? Research. A how-to on research. I need the tools but I lack them. Silence. Richness. I’ve said nothing and lots of words of fears and consternations. So much wasted ink! Forget original thoughts and cleverness. This hurts—this emptiness hurts. Where is my inspiration? I feel it escaping me. Green round table. Wants. Farts.

I can’t even say it.

I want to say something beautiful. All I say is useless. It’s the saying something that I’m having problems.

Nothing has happened and all the words I throw against the wall slide down and leave a greasy residue.