the artistic process is shady and subtle

I’d be off to the nearest bar drinking something the bartender had perfected in a test tube in the backroom, where he mainly saw inside trading and poker faces and the occasional pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, which usually had a street value of about $140.73.

Some nights, I’d even get cored by scam artists from The Big Apple. Still, at least I’d have enough coin left over to rent a room for the night and buy a loaf of sprouted wheat bread, some meatless bologna, and a bottle of wine made from grapes that were grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides.

Come morning, I’d head east or west, sometimes north or south, depending on my mood, and end up in a library, a church, an arcade, or an amusement park, someplace where my failures weren’t so noticeable.

I’d befriend a stray dog and named him after some Russian writer like Gogol, Turgenev, or Pushkin. We’d travel like Steinbeck and Charley, but I wasn’t searching for America, just a clean, well-lit room where I could write and drink some wine and maybe even fall in love for at least an hour or two.

Eventually, the mutt would grow weary of my aimlessness, doubts, and lack of energy and dedication and wander off to another part of the city where he could find a more symbiotic relationship.

I’d thread another page into my typewriter and try to figure out my childhood, but I’d always turn it into a fairy tale without a moral or a happy ending.

I’d regain consciousness the following morning, frustrated at the parameters linked to creation, and take my typewriter to a pawn shop, where a guy with frizzy blond hair, green eyes, and a nervous giggle would loan me enough to keep me from becoming a hunger artist for a week or so.

Then I’d stroll over to the clinic and donate some of my blood plasma, strike up conversations with surly girls, gaunt sailors, naive prostitutes, and other well-meaning urban ghosts, collect my thirty-five dollars, cash the check at a liquor store, buy a bottle of brandy produced just outside the town of Cognac (because I was on a budget) and head to the sea, in search of waterfront women filled with primitive emotions and savage joys.

I’d buy them a gin and tonic, and they’d say things like, “If I don’t accomplish something of worth before my time is up, I’ll start decaying before your very eyes…”

By the third or fourth round of drinks, they would either be in tears or on the verge of proposing to me.

After their hangovers subsided, they’d rub their eyes and emerge from their reverie. They realized how little depth and dimension I’d added to their gray, silent lives and said, “Guess a beautiful civil ceremony at city hall just wasn’t in the cards for us.” I’d take them in my arms one last time, embrace them, and whisper something like, “I hope you shine through this world peacefully,” they’d leave, weeping, always weeping. At the same time, I continued to tramp the countryside alone, still believing in the myth of salvation and hoping to gain some wisdom from my adventure, regardless of the outcome.