That Miasma, Pride

Even now, as the Library stretches around me, its erections, walls of silent tomes, spiraling laterally about the center, I can feel it �"that reptilian horror that chews at the base of my spine.

The collection I’ve made for myself to read, a modest pile of six or seven books, a few journals, a few novels, sits to my left at nearly a right angle to me. The papers before me lie there, dotted and ruined by juvenile ideas conducted through the spinal cord, into the arm, and out of the pen.

I pick them up, the flowers of budding cognitions, and read them to myself once more over.

        “A poem called, ‘Tinnitus,’ where the ringing finally stops with the flat line of their heart’s monitor.”

“A commentary on the state of art, titled something along the lines of: Seven Arts, Six Feet Under.”

        Humorous to me, that these concepts seemed so brilliant at their times of genesis and now seem so useless and vague. Even the most vapid of minds are able to recognize their mildness; and yet mine, which so desperately clings to some idea of superiority above something continues to produce its same caliber of content.

        The previously dimly lit room erupts into light by the ignition of several fluorescent bulbs above. Then, footsteps. tack. tack. tack. tack.

A body passes by my station at one of the library’s many lightly colored, wooden tables, and dives between two rows of bookshelves. It remains, evidently scanning the spines of books for sight of a predetermined target, then takes its prize of inquisition moments later.

        A scar of white cracks the dark outside and fades as natural, ephemeral light; an artificial glow from the library’s ceiling flickers and dies out. All is silent but the incessant skittering of rain against structure and the Teslan whine of light.

        I shift my papers to the side and reach to the stack of books to my side, grasping the spine of the top publication. The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.

        I thumb through the pages, stopping at an arbitrary point within the novel, approximately a third of the way through. On either side of my point, the pages are blank and so is the one of my choosing.

The scales of regret and indecision scratch and agitate mercilessly against my core. I take up my pen and begin.