Thanksgiving, In the Library

My heels click against the marble floors and ring out loudly, yet the books lining every wall catch the sounds, record them, and there is no report.

In this room, there is a long, wide table. Wood, or the appearance thereof. On the table, there is a folio case, open, with a few pages splayed as though someone had been hastily reviewing them and then suddenly had to leave.

I walk over to the table. I do not sit. I stand, and with full posture, reach down delicately and address the first page. Here, I do not need reading glasses. The text enters my mind swiftly and without error:

“You seem really lonely.” Well, I am. Or was.

“There are too many characters.” Fuck off.

“It’s too vague, and it’s cold. It’s very cold.” You know that one from Eight.

“These people are deplorable, and I don’t give a shit about them.” Well, they loved me, and I was their friend. So I do, I guess. Or did.

“You should hire an editor.” Your mother should hire an editor.

“It’s very hard on the reader.” Life’s hard. Try it sometime.

“Whoever is gonna get this book is going to need a basic education in psychology and philosophy.” Not my problem.

“What the editor wants is what goes. That’s how it is in publishing.” I don't work with an editor, nor will I.

“It’s like someone sat down next to me on a train and started telling me things, but I don’t know why.” Okay.

“You explore a lot of topics but in a very superficial way. There’s no depth.” Your mother is superficial and has no depth.

“I think it is great that you wrote all that but you should go back and rework it, maybe cut some of it out.” How about you cut it out.

“I think you could poach some of his readership.” You’re a poacher. I’m not.

“There may be a degree of care there, but I certainly never got any sense that they wanted to protect.” Okay.

“There’s actually three books here. One is kind of good. The other two suck.” Aw, sucks.

“You need an agent.” Your mother needs an agent.

“God save us from the writer as artist.” God save us from the writer as merchant.

I gently set that page aside, pick up another. The words come into my mind without resistance:

Pump was giving it to me hard from behind.

Lyre watched from an overstuffed blue vinyl chair, her legs parted, bush wet with excitement, peeking out from under her belly, one tit out of her large white t-shirt. She rubbed herself and moaned, smiling at my pained spurts as Pump rammed his cock into me.

Now, like I said, it was smallish. But it was big enough to hurt some. It was mostly a good hurt. The uncomfortable part for me was that I didn’t really feel that way about him. Nor he me, really, but he was all material, so fucking was fucking for him.

It was her. We were both in love with her and wanted to please her. And she loved to watch us fuck.

I place that one on top of the first, then have a look at the last loose folio:

If Soma is made from my mind, surely Soma II is born of my heart.

(a) the immediate.

I lay on the floor, pelvis pressing down. It’s excited, like sexually aroused. My legs crossed at the ankles, sandals loosely on my feet. I feel naked, but I’m wearing a thong, jeans, a sheer cotton shirt that’s baggy. I can hear the birds talking their little dinosaur chirps. I have little or no makeup on but I feel pretty. My hair is long, golden. I push my pelvis into the floor more, grind a little, enjoy the feeling in my ass.

I smell the fresh paint.

Sunlight is all around, but I’m shaded, so it’s not blinding. The temperature is just right. Warm with a faint breeze, moderate humidity.

I have black coffee, a dark roast French-pressed.

(b) the outer-broad.

It’s a world where gender is defined momentarily and barely. Where hands, hearts, and lips find one another with some ease, a bit of grace. Where the rolling hills and the city streets are one, a synchronous natural byway. The folks are variegated and kind. They enjoy each other and helping each other. We no longer foolishly or feebly rebuke Nature, rather we’ve come home to Her, and all is well.

Music is like wind and smiles and singing the greetings. No salutations, really, because we are all one, and we know that, comfortably.

The best and worst of everything is calmer, less pronounced. Tragedy is no longer as human an affair, rather the whole world embraces itself in chaotic, harmonious beauty.

(c) the me-so.

Lyre is with me. We’re holding hands, kissing, touching each other. I love her. I kiss her breasts, and she licks my neck, my ears.

Alongside the byways of Santa Monica and Sunset, we stroll and kiss, talk. She’s my love but I’m not hers. Still, she wants me. Likes being with me. And no love of mine ever lasts, even here in Soma II. I try not to let that ruin it.

At Pona, she picks up our order and I Bubble Lila. Get her paper, like always these days. I can’t see my way back to her, in this, the lilac soon June.

Lyre returns, brushes back my bangs, licks my cheek. I get hard and wet. She can tell. Leads me with her pinky pulling mine. I stumble forward on suede heels, my bare ankles loving the sun, wanting desperately to make love. She gives me that grin, the one that perishes me, drags me down the street, then a quick turn, past the sleepy doorman, and into the dark of the music hall. She pulls me into a booth, kisses me while urging me forward. Tosses the takeout on the table, whispers for me to strip and fuck her. I say here? She says yeah. So I do, strip down as the dirty old men watch over three shots each, bleary eyed and gray beards, as one waiter shakes his head, another takes her break and watches with a smoke. My shirt is still on, as are my heels, but my bottom is bare. Lyre says the shirt, too, but leave the heels, that she’s feeling porny. I do what she wants. Get naked to the heels. Then I fuck her from behind in the booth, while she stays clothed, making eyes at the bartender over the back of the seat. I know they want to fuck. I can see it on his face, and feel it in her wetness. She whispers just loud enough for me to hear, says to come inside her, and I do.

I must have set that one down, too, because it’s not in my hand anymore.

But neither am I still in that same room.

Now, I am in another room, a meeting space. The ceiling has a dome-like quality, but isn’t shaped like a half-sphere exactly. There is a ridge in the middle, and the two resultant halves are not quarter spheres, rather more bean-shaped. Within them, each half, is a leaf-like structure along the surface of the ceiling. It’s gold—or perhaps silver—the filament that comprises the structure. The more I stare at it, the more complex it becomes, and I can see that there is a pattern beneath the pattern, one beneath that, and so on until I can no longer consciously distinguish depth, yet I am experiencing depth at the deepest frequency.

There is some light emanating from this reticulum, but it doesn’t seem to do much in way of illuminating the room. That light is sourced ambiently, from some origin that I cannot determine, not from the effort I am putting in.

The table in this room is similar to the last, yet it is longer and less wide. There are folks here, gathered around and genial. They are talking, sometimes laughing, but soon I realize they are not talking with each other. Whoever it is they are talking to is not here—or I cannot see them, if they are.

A feeling of immense gratitude fills me. It starts in my chest and quickly spreads out from there until I am pleasantly stuffed from it. I realize I am smiling, and it is the best kind of smile, the one that flows effortlessly from acknowledgement, from acceptance, from presence. I hope you are feeling this, too, I think. No matter where you are or all that has come between us.

Play procedures:

• Name what you are thankful for. It isn’t enough of a procedure to stop there; you can deepen the experience by looking at each thought and seeing the envelope of a story there, one each. Write those down, or make a mental note of each, think about them enough to commit them to memory. If you don’t feel like doing it, make a willpower check. If you do not have a willpower score yet, you may assign yourself one now. Failure means you miss the opportunity and carry on doomscrolling or watching TikTok or whatever. Success means you give it a legitimate effort and now have a handful of valuable story seeds. Great success results in a complex, personal narrative, perhaps a novel or epic poem, as well as a group of plants you could turn over for years to come.

• You may be in the Library with me now, if you like. You may explore it, but I cannot stay with you voluntarily, so you will need to keep an eye on me if you want me to be there or else I am likely to blink into some other part of it. The Library is vast—so vast as to be effectively limitless, so you might want to make a map. If you do not, well, it was nice knowing you.

• There is no music in the Library, that you’ve heard. If you have songs in your inventory, you can try experimenting with playing music here and seeing what happens. If you have The Black Book of Fear, it does not respond as long as you are here. It is quiet.