Unmitigated Anarchy

She feels as if everything is too much and nothing is enough, or there is too much of not enough. She thinks she runs out of things to do, but really she does not have any desire to do much. She ends up talking to herself in endless rehearsals—rehearsals in which she revises and revises and revises. Does it help her fill the empty spots, or does her life pass before her eyes in a series of pensive vignettes? As a result, she finds herself suffocating under the niagara of her own thoughts.

As far as she could discern in her memories, the compound was inundated with losers of every description: dastards and nudniks, midgets in denial, lobotomized dreamers, and maniacal altruists. I leveled with these? she thought. Then she wished for something, anything that liposuctions bad karma. She looked outside the glass door, then quickly turning her head from the filing clerk whose salivary glands would shift into third every time he looked at her, she snarled. Here she is, blue and terrified, looking outside the window, searching for raison d’être. She checked her messages in a quick manner, disregarding most. With the eyes of a cod she looked at the man wearing an advanced-sarcoma-sized pinkie ring. He went on and on and on, as if he suffered from verbal diarrhea. Before leaving, he recited Sonnet XXXIV. She reacted, murmured something, and then averted her eyes, looking directly at the flowerpot, continuing to drown into her jumbled thoughts. He is a know-it-all but does not really get it. She imagined herself as a consummate professor, having a place on a hill, uttering Shakespeare all day. Using deep breathing exercises, she got up at once to avoid hyperventilating into oblivion. With psychotic intensity, she walked out of the room like a myrmidon, not closing the door behind her. She had to get out—the atmosphere reeked of self-proclaimed minions. Almost running over the phenomenally concocted blonde who doubled as secretary and masseuse, she drove to the exit. It was too much. She gasped for air, pulled up in front of the fountain at the cemetery close by, opened up a letter and started to read. Aristotelian recipe for tragedy she thought. With one breath she read or reread the writing. She felt a cold shiver projecting up her spine. What then? This is an anomaly. It might give birth to a rising star, but still . . . it would not be enough . . .