HERMETIC MELANCHOLY

LETS say that night has come and the wind has died down and the blue-green trees have turned to gray and the ice mountains, slick under the scarred face of the moon, are like ghosts, motionless in the distance, and the moons weak light streams into the room where you sit at a table, staring into a glass of whiskey, and where you have been so long that the night, so still, so stark, has become not only your day, but the whole of your life; and let’s say that while you are there the sun, the actual sun, has risen, and it occurs to you that what you made of the night was only a possibility, a painless, rarified form of despair that could lead, if continued, to an unwanted conclusion, and you realize that the words you chose were not the right words—you were never the person they suggested you were; now let’s say that there is a loaded gun in the house and you toy with the idea of using it and say, “Go ahead, shoot yourself, ” but here, too, the words are not right, so, as you have often done, you revise them before it’s too late.