to a mirror reviewed

I've lost nearly all faith in every one of my character virtues, save this one: I am without doubt the greatest writer of my generation.

I am quietly drunk on this thought all day; I am reflective of those I encounter in my daily journey, how he or she had just met somebody phenominal and did not know it. I sit high in the mountain and look down upon an ordinary world and wonder who is my peer in this mountain retreat. Indeed, it would seem my cup runneth over with Ego. But the question possesses my mind nonetheless: who am I?

My quest is to become whole, this Pinocchio-like fixation, and to know love when I am loved and to be loved when giving it. All the talent one acquires in life does not prepare an individual for the fair comprehension of love—of sighting it on the beach or splashing in the waves with it or sitting still and thoughtful of the gulls that dip down to the surf to retrieve it from the mysteries of the sea, or walking along and trailing its long shadow of dismay. I wonder when or if the reach of love might find me. Now, when I pause for a second from being the great writer, I nose into the perhaps of an unknown future. If God had made light from dark, then I must consider He may choose to do the same for me; and (an irony a god might favor) I may be waiting on a god who may be waiting on me.

My failure may be in this waiting. What I could do is begin to write from my inspired waters...or what I could do is begin a journey that would take me through the better part of an eternity. Floating in such ambivalence has the disadvantage of gradually losing the will to live for anything. I float; and I know what death feels like. For love, I would commit myself to ten-thousand deaths, each death producing courage enough to face the next, for love itself is courage by another name.

But now—lacking love—I drop to my knees of futility, my body pulling into a ball of loneliness.

Who am I? Who is the darkness? I question again and again and again.

John.