night visions (sorry this is forever)

My stories never end. They ramble on, tangles of loose threads, half-faded transitions to subplots that lie under a main plotline that does not exist.

More than anything else I want to write stories about goldfish. There is something entirely beautiful and neverending in the worst pet you'll ever have, the most boring, bred in massive quantities and sold for quarters in dingy pet shops worldwide. Given away at carnivals, if you're lucky. A prize, not instead-of-a-dog. I wonder what they think. Their short-term memory span, says science, is three seconds. They live in homes with invisible walls that turn everything humans say into incomprehensible murmuring. Mmmmwmmwwm. Mwmmm mnwwnmmm.

You know you've got to treat it well. You can't just let things go to waste. You've got to find some purpose for them, a direction. Otherwise they lie still and grow stale and stagnant and stupid. Drugs. What about them.

Clean your room, you'll feel better. Make up code words with your friends and wink at them, especially if they're pretty. Who knows, maybe one of them will help you forget. Is that our purpose? To forget? Forgive and forget, or do neither. Your call. 9 p.m. on the telephone, parents at dinner. Your hands are notebooks until you wash them. If you wash them. Goblins.

I wonder if goldfish hear music. If the water sings them to sleep and to rise, sings them happy and sad and forgetting in three seconds, sings them they are special, they are mass-produced because they are so very precious, the universe would die without them. I wonder if the water sings them look at that shiny coin traded just for you. Look at your home but don't touch. You'll get it all wet. Oh, no.

When I put in my headphones I am a goldfish. Everyone can talk all they want, I'm not there. I'm twenty-five cents of pure gold scale and a tiny heart going bump bump bump all day giving blood to my tiny invisible fins. Look at my eyes. These are eyes. Day and night my heart goes. Do your shiny cars go that long? Do your shiny quarters? I am the moon! Watch me, look at my eyes. Blup. Blup.

Bring her around, talk to her some, watch her eyes, look at her eyes. Window to the soul, if you're a window shopper. If that's your thing. It happens to be my thing.

Bring her around. It's just a transition, just a half-faded movie frame. Pass the popcorn. Here's where the hero discovers heartbreak, or goldfish. I can't remember. It's the same old Hollywood formula, I can't remember. There's a car chase later.

Did you know I'm writing a novel? It starts like this: "My stories never end." I think it'll be a hit. I think it'll be America. I think it'll describe the human condition. Yes, hello Doctor I have the human condition. We have just the thing for that. Did you know I'm writing a screenplay?

Hey, it's easy. You don't have to have heartbreak, you don't have to regret. We are all writing our own stories. We are the authors here. We hold the mighty pen, the mighty keyboard, the mighty voice transcription program. I am writing a novel by talking out loud and hoping there's a biographer present. I am writing three novels. They are about the same things and have the same storyline, but I'm hoping to achieve something here. Watch it, buddy.

Just take it easy. Relax, have a couch, have a drink, have a crystal. Nobody's listening. You can tell me, buddy. You can tell me, I'm your biographer. Let's just have a smoke about it. Your brain's not important; turn it off. Just talk. Tell me everything, beginning with the part where you're a kid. Begin at the beginning, I always say in a soothing tone. Open up tell me everything let's just talk okay alright let's talk until you're satisfied then we can wake up and not do anything it would hurt to try and would take up your valuable time after all you're important.

Far far away goldfish. The one thing many writers discover about writing is that if you try to control your characters you end up with bad writing. It's almost as if the characters are real people. And yet the characters aren't in control of the story either. Who then? Goldfish have a remarkable amount of visual acuity, and can distinguish between different human beings. Some blind goldfish can identify specific humans by their voices. The actual memory span of a goldfish, contrary to the popular myth that it is only three seconds, is up to three months. Goldfish are very pretty and are good for stories.

I never want to stop writing. While writing Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard would sometimes lock herself in her room and write for fifteen hours of the day. There is sweat and blood in writing done well. I want that sweat, and I want that blood with all my blood.

The empty fields sing empty songs in the winter. The villagers tell tales of the corn and the wheat, of the cicadas and the Japanese beetles. The scarecrow croaks stories to Brother Crow, who is skeptical. His eye glitters. He takes to the wind and watches the emptiness of the earth. Lie fallow. Brother Crow lives in a copse. Brother Crow lives on sweat and blood. His is the claw, his is the cloak.

The scarecrow is haunted by ghosts. Ghosts of sweat and blood and love and tears and snowboots and hands shaking. The scarecrow's head is a goldfish bowl. He sings to the world: take it all away take it away take this take it all away.

Good luck in the dark, good luck good luck, find a golden penny, call it your own. North American Twentieth Century Ghost Story. Write your own. Let your own write itself. Happy endings never solved a thing. Happy endings never solved a mystery. Let the canaries perch on your head and never shake them away. Maybe they'll sing to you once in awhile. Maybe they'll sing some more after that.