Tell Rhonda I'm sorry I scared her. 

I've written no book.  No play.  Not even a short story, or a decent poem.  Just indecent babbling, like this.  Am I feeling sorry for myself?  You bet, I am.  I have rushed to be the first to pity me, as if there was a crowd of others on their way.  In truth there is no pity, there is only my disabling fear that maybe, in reality, no one really cares.  And so I sing loudly my lament, so loudly that I can pretend others are singing with me, loud enough so that I won't have to know there are no other voices. 

Thank u, black immenseness, dark void of the internet; thank you for accepting all the words I threw, sacramentally, into you.  Thank u, lonliness, you were one of my most faithful companions, though there were others; and thank u, others.  You know who you are. 

Thank u, captains of industry (although I don't know if it is right to try and personify such a thing—there's nothing human about a multinational).  Without you, I'd have lost my mind in some silly notion of intrinsic dignity.  And there's no telling where that would have taken me.  And thank u, irony.  Without you my self-centered misery would never have survived here in the richest and most powerful nation on earth. 

Lastly, thank u, guilt.  You are the safety valve of joy.  Without you my heart might have swelled with happiness, growing to dangerous dimensions.  Without you guilt, my joy-filled soul might expand to enormity, like a giant hot-air balloon, or like the Hindenburg.  And we all know how that ended. 

When I am bike riding, I am annoyed by breathing-in the heavy, diesel-laden air of this city's streets.  This seems funny, since I have done other things, also clearly harmful, without hesitation—and I would do them again.  But sucking in great lungs-full of diesel-scented, blackened cloudy air while I am pumping my pedals, panting hard, trying to propel myself safely through streams of converging traffic; this annoys me. 

I'm sorry that my writing is so ungrounded, so vague and hard to follow, like a fruit fly in the dark.  I am dying.  Yes, just like before.  Yes, like always, before.  That's where I was going on my bike today--no, not to die, but to the next best thing.  I was going to the doctor.  For a while, things were getting better, healthwise.  Now, they're getting worse.  But you see, I don't want anyone to pity me, self-pity is that way.  Self-pity is a jealous queen, she tolerates no others and she will not share her power over me.  But self-pity is an act, it is a theatrical masque, with exaggerated features to help us see what it stands for.  It is also worn to protect compassion's face beneath, for that face is delicate.  Self-pity is a stylized masque we wear because compassion is hard to see.  It sometimes overwhelms us; sometimes compassion's face is too painful for us to see. 

Maybe I should write a suicide note in earnest.  Not as part of a plan, but as an excercise, an exploratory excursion into the dressing room, where the masque comes off, where the note is discovered.  The place where the body is found. 

And be sure to tell Rhonda that I'm sorry I scared her.