I'm Only Laughing

I’m only laughing because the formula for living a good life turned out to be much simpler than imagined. But here: let me give you this. I won’t say what it is, just that it’s heavy, and may require some effort to wrestle it into significance. If you accept this challenge, I will provide you with another choice later on, after the Romans leave, and solicit the use of a pencil with which to draw an accordion, the kind that Marie Laurencin once played on the streets of Montmartre. It will explain everything. The hypothesis making up this pavane is somewhat insouciant, I know, and for that I apologize, but listen to its little heart beat and how poised and studied it reposes on the page. Turpentine is postulated upon freedom, and is composed of terpenes. Everybody knows how important it is to avoid too many adjectives. But if you think getting rich is easy, try living under a license plate. Clatter a pan with a spoon if you believe me. Then plug the toaster in. We have things to talk about. I have things to say to you that you may find picturesque. I need to hold your interest. I worry about falling out of you. You don’t know how hard that is on my self-esteem, particularly as a writer. Will you accept this coupon? By the scorpion in me of all that I hold dear I will make a racket behind the scenes if you can’t persuade yourself that chrome is superior in many ways to copper. It took a lot of pillows to put this thought asleep. And now that I’ve made an arm of iron wire my plan will be to make a contrivance of our alliance, something along the lines of an open field in which the moonlight broods on a mushroom. And the world will be our tablecloth, a place of sharing, a thought to unfold in private, like the embodiment of hunger, or Act III of Hamlet, in which Hamlet utters his soliloquy about suicide. It’s good. We’ll make popcorn. Bring a clarinet if you feel like bathing. I’m not going to force you to do the breaststroke. That’s up to you. But I will be screaming my independence to the surrounding hills. The one exception will be if the moon generates a pane of glass. If that happens, then the dots I’ve painted on the boat stand for nothing. Look at it as an allegory of potential, an unrealized thingamajig. Yes, of course, the trick of certainty is silver. But there’s gold in improbability.