Ficlets

In the Bleakness of Winter Thought

Do you ever wonder what happens when it ends? When the thrubdubbing of your heart slows, and the last little electrical pulse in your brain flatlines and you’re sleeping the big sleep? Is there a choir eternal? Is there nothingness? Are we recycled? Will we remember? Will I ever have a sense of me again? Or, gosh, am I just being a selfish bastard, really, and I should be thinking about something – anything – else ‘cause after all the world’s a mess and I might could be doing something about it.

In the bleakness of winter thought I wonder if art isn’t an act of desperation… an attempt to scream “Look at me! Look at me now, now when there’s a chance I’m still breathing!” Or whether it’s a wish to be remembered when it is all over. And then I want to reach for a paintbrush and create a goddam masterwork that’ll leave the ordinary man breathless with the viewing of it—numb at the wonder of it. Today. Forever. And then the feeling passes and all I really want is a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk.

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