--- D A V I D   B A R R I N G E R

This little writer . . .
. . . wrote about living life to the fullest. Wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

This little writer . . .
. . . wrote creative non-fiction on elevated trains. He ate fruit from paper bags and kept a knife in his jacket and owned a computer. He was paid well by men's magazines because, like a character actor or secret agent, he was not afraid to live like and become like his subjects and yet was able to report back coherently from his suspensions between worlds. His delusions of grandeur were no more and no less than anyone else's, although he would never have conceded to moderation in anything. He lost touch with his parents and married twice and hasn't yet decided whether the commission of a violent crime or a white-collar fraud would land him a better book deal.

This little writer . . .
. . . had been writing beautifully and stirringly for nearly twelve years, and, as she neared the end of her project, she was afraid that this confluence of desire and ability and opportunity would fall apart at any minute. She was afraid that at any moment she would not be able to write or would not want to. She was afraid it would all end before she had finished. She tried to tell herself she wouldn't mind if it all ended. Passions, after all, were not self-perpetuating. She would find something else to do. That wouldn't be hard. She edited and rewrote the volumes of her writing for another twelve years and continued to assure her friends, fewer of whom were still alive, that she would have time for them next summer. She was almost ready.

This little writer . . .
. . . did not seek too much pleasure for she knew it would lead to a reciprocal degree of pain. She was wary of hills and valleys of emotions and sought only mild breezes from the plain. She was sensible but reassuringly overweight (she loved to cook for herself), and, though her life was terribly dull, she now and then slipped from her adamant, reproving nature into the higher tones of gentle self-mockery. Those who didn't know her well found her style endearing. She collected antique bicycles and potato mashers and wrote an advice column, syndicated in community newspapers, until she was eighty-three.

This little writer . . .
. . . read, as a freelance journalist out of college, The Human Nature of Birds, by Theodore (Ph.D.), and discovered in its pages that birds had musical, navigational and erotic abilities, used tools, solved problems, played elaborate games, and often painted the walls of their nests. Plus, of course, most could fly. He had intended to review the book, and did so, and sold it to a trade journal for retired persons. He was humbled for years and loved women too deeply and wrote badly. He became a middle-school teacher. The brighter girls adored him and came early to class to watch him read the sonnets of Shakespeare.

This little writer . . .
. . . had won a prestigious literary award for her second social-realist novel days before she became convinced that in the safe victory of her life, she could afford to perform fellatio on the young college boy who was building the gazebo in the back garden of her country house. Crushingly ashamed within hours, she could not bring herself to call her friends to boast of her award. She felt the story of her life could not recover from such cliché. She took to drinking tea and renounced masturbation. Her asceticism lasted until dinner, when she began to wonder whether it wasn't the act for which she should be ashamed but, rather, her inability to rise above the social convention of shame itself. She became depressed. Such a banal psycho-sexual crisis could be overcome through force of will, but she didn't know how to accomplish it. She was thirty-two-years old and utterly depressed and she couldn't write a line. The boy returned the next weekend to paint the gazebo, and now they have two children and live in an apartment in the city, where she writes vampire stories.

This little writer . . .
. . . had not written much before he found himself in perfectly horrible circumstances. These were circumstances in which he irritated his fellow compatriots by going around with incongruous giggles and insulting smirks and grinning relish. He knew in his heart he had been blessed with artistic providence: the subject of a first great novel lay all around him. Killed before writing a word, he died without knowing he had lived well.

This little writer . . .
. . . gave birth to a girl and was struck with the fact of consciousness. Was it true it was the newest human organ and, therefore, evolutionarily speaking, the least developed? To regard consciousness as a settled capacity, a completed project, was arrogance. Might we not strive to develop it? Might we perform exercises? She abandoned her self-help audio tapes, wrote keenly observed nature essays at home, and was so miserable when her daughter left for her first day of school that she went out to swing on the swings but instead sat there and cried. Then she got up and went inside and began a diary.