The failure wakes up just at dusk, so that the sun is sinking over the mountains, even farther west than he is. Some nights are crazy, minor epics in themselves, but most are like caverns. Life falls into them and looses its way. Small actions, amounting to nothing in themselves, reverberate against the water and the stale air and waft back in little puffs of doom. Thoughts ram themselves against the looming walls everywhere pressing in, in, they just go up forever, those walls, no opening, no ceiling, they have nothing to hold up so they become loads pressing down and toward and against and upon. And then there are the zombies. Sometimes I hear them bumping into things and calling to each other about beer and dance clubs and pool. Every so often, they catch me and hold me down and commence eating, sapping, but I can escape them when I want to. Usually they just make a spectacle of themselves.

It is spring break. I am now at the library, working for $8.50 an hour, and God only knows how I got here. There is a man who was in my seminar last semester, sitting at a desk ten feet away from me, reading. He has several books open. It is doubtless intellectual stuff, stuff I ought to know by now and probably never will. He is trying to show me the Way, but I doubt that I can follow. He has been here since nine o'clock this morning. I wonder how much of his life he's devoted to learning. I have failed to complete any of my projects. Perhaps this is because I always took on too many, but perhaps I never had a chance. Variety is bad. Distractions are bad. It's just me with my ambitions, and that should be enough, but I'm all alone and lost. I've been reading old e-mails and getting wistful. I never knew these people, and I don't know them now. It is particularly interesting when they are replies to my own e-mail, and they neglected to delete my writing. I've said everything and nothing in the past five years.

Faulkner had it figured out, but then again he didn't. Kerouac never had it figured out, but sometimes he did. And Kant. Ah yes, Kant. Even now I haven't shamed myself enough to actually work on Kant. Anyone for Latin flashcards? Do you know how to play Go, and would you like to teach me? Isn't sunlight strange, the way it beats everything into submission?