paraphrased raze for as long as he could remember, he always felt compelled to document all that had been said and done, and all he'd been a part of. he didn't want to live on threadbare memories of the sermons served up by those he loved and learned not to love. he wanted all of their words preserved just as they'd been spoken. every hesitation and inflection. each bit of empty syntax. all the spit and silence that lived between the lines. he began to write the novel of his life. he knew no eyes but his own would ever read the manuscript, but he drew some amount of satisfaction from the thought that he would someday succeed in capturing the sum total of what he saw as his true life's work. he would hold a magnifying glass up to the moments most people allowed to fall between the cracks of flesh-flecked pavement. he would give them all their due. he would buttress the bit players and elevate them to the heroes and villains they were born to be. the book grew longer and more ambitious until it struck him that he was spending more time cataloguing his life than he was living it. the distance between author and fictional figure blurred to the point that he felt like a slave to a plot no longer guided by his own hand. the more he tried to write himself back to a place of balance and understanding, the less he felt he understood. he went on writing. he wrote himself a great romance, but his contempt for conventional happy endings proved insurmountable. bleak as it was, the resolution he invented fell flat. he wrote himself into depression. then indifference. then a kind of battered self-belief that he knew was little more than an ill-fitting mask. he wrote himself a gourmet dinner. a quiet piece for a soloist with candlelit accompaniment. that was simple enough. after licking his proverbial plate clean, he studied a blank page and waited for something to happen. the pen began to move on its own. a river of ink clotted and constructed scenes he could see and taste and smell. there were turns of phrase that took his breath away. new characters that were so fully-formed he felt he'd known them all his life. landscapes that were startling in their cinematic sweep. it was the finest thing he'd ever written. he pressed the pages into angry-looking balls and threw them away. he wrote himself into oblivion. darkness ate him alive. it was everything he'd ever wanted. it was nothing at all. he found some small source of light. he studied what he'd written in the long time without it. the handwriting was alien to him. it was more refined than it had any right to be. he was reading someone else's story. he fashioned the narrative into a coat. now it was winter, and he was remembering what it was to be warm and wanted. he opened his mouth to speak a tale that wasn't his to tell. he wanted to know how it would end. 250906 what's it to you? who go blather from