I collected a collection of bitters, not that I had any particular interest in bitters, but I thought that perhaps this would make me stand out, that it would make me of interest, that people would learn I had an extensive collection of bitters, some of them quite unusual and difficult to obtain in the US, a few of which were in fact illegal to sell in this country due to concerns with heavy metals and other toxic substances, but which I had nevertheless obtained, and they would say to themselves that they had never considered collecting bitters, and they would wonder, perhaps with fascination, what sort of individual I must be.

For years in each conversation I began, or in any conversation I found myself, I hoped for the opportunity to mention this, my collection of bitters, although to do so without seeming I had been hoping to mention this, to have it come up “naturally”; although any time a conversation began to approach some topic that might allow for my collection to come up naturally, such as for example if my conversant mentioned an interest in cocktails, or having been to a bar at some point in the recent past, or in the distant past, or having a collection of some sort of their own, whether rocks or stamps or adult video games, I would be overcome with nervousness and abruptly, even rudely, change the topic.

Anyhow it is uncommon that I get into many conversations. For a period, when I first began my collection, I tried to get into conversations, buoyed as I was by the possibility of mentioning my collection, that my collection, which I was inevitably too nervous to mention, might make me seem more interesting than I am. I would not describe myself as a nervous person.

I would not describe myself as a nervous person but I am, I have lived with myself long enough that I cannot deny certain basic facts about myself, such as that I am nervous, such as that I am boxy and long-headed, such as that I have an obsession which most people would consider unhealthy with adult video games, I mean video games intended exclusively for adults, such as the infamous “Custer’s Last Stand” in which you control a heavily pixilated and clothesless Custer attempting to mate with a heavily pixilated and unclothed Native American woman. It is not an enjoyable game but I am obsessed with it, the fact of it, that someone made it and that other someones had to go to the counter at the electronics store to ask for it specifically since due to its pornographic nature it was not allowed to be displayed on the sales floor. I am a nervous person even if in my head I never think of myself as nervous, even if I think of myself (and I do) as an interesting and intelligent person who is always or almost always or at any rate quite often more intelligent than the people around me, for example my coworkers, some of whom like me input data which is checked by the computer and others of whom check data which is input by the computer, and towards whom I nevertheless hold out hope that I will someday enter into a conversation with one of them, and it will come out naturally that I have a collection of bitters, including several bitters which may not be legally obtained in this country, and they will remark if only to themselves what a strange and fascinating individual I must be.

The sky is wrong.

The sky is wrong though I cannot identify a specific moment in my memory when the sky changed, when it went from being not-wrong to wrong, what I know is that at some point a line from not-wrong to wrong was passed and the sky has been wrong since. This blue is not the blue the sky was in my childhood, it is a different blue, similar in all respects but not the same, at times I think it is not blue at all but only the simulation of blue. This I think is why people refuse to look at the sunset, why they won’t even acknowledge me when I tell them they must look up.

I do not think I am particularly special or unique, although I cannot shake the feeling that I am, that there are potentialities inside me that do not exist in the people around me, for example my coworkers, or other people’s coworkers, or the people who pass me by on the street without acknowledging me when I tell them the sky is wrong; likewise that I am the possessor of certain intensities of feeling that do not make themselves known within others, or if they do are ignored or misunderstood, taken for granted as something other than the intensity of feeling which they in fact are. I cannot say with precision what these potentialities are or portend, only that I feel them. At times, I worry they are growing quieter. I sit in my ergonomic chair which was previously someone else’s ergonomic chair until he or she, most likely he, grew tired of it and ordered a new one, sending this ergonomic chair, which is no longer able to adjust its height or the angle of its left arm, down the line to my department, the inputting-things-into-computer or checking-things-inputted-by-computer department; and with that portion of my soul which is not engaged in the inputting of data I feel around for the potentiality which I am sure resides in me, poking at it like a loose tooth.

One afternoon I saw a bird.

I do not mean to say of course that it was the first time I had seen a bird, I have and had seen many birds before this one, particularly the pigeons who gather in winter near the heat vents on the side of the building in which I work.

What I mean is, it was a bird in flight. Though of course I had seen birds in flight before.

Just prior to this I had stood up from my desk and had taken the elevator to the top floor and had walked through the open air of the empty observation deck with a presentiment or a foreboding that I would not be returning inside. As if this idea, that I would not be returning inside, came from elsewhere, from somewhere outside myself. I have thought about killing myself before, as everyone does, but I have never been able to take myself seriously when I do. This was what I had in mind when I saw the bird described, though poorly, above.

What I mean is, it was a bird that was flying off into the distance, at such an angle that all around it blazed a halo of light.

I cannot say what kind of bird it was. It could even have been a pigeon, I do not know.

Surely you, the reader, have experienced such grace.