10.18.16, 1:41 PM

Dear Der,

Yesterday it all became unbearable, so I rid myself of the foolish notion that it was possible to accomplish anything and went to Riverside Park to ponder the natures of consciousness and reality.

The park appeared empty except for me, the rats, and some decrepit saxophonist, whom I found in the tunnel under the highway. He was spinning an almost forgotten tale of a far-off land. Sympathizing with his tune, I dropped a quarter into his open case. It was the first cent he had made. That didn’t surprise me. These days who had time to pay attention to obsolete music in a rat-infested park?

I dropped in three more quarters. He played on without acknowledging the gesture. I threw another four quarters, then four more, into the open case. Still, he showed no gratitude, not even a glance in my direction.

I removed roll after roll of quarters until my pockets were empty. I had several thousand dollars in change. I took the quarters everywhere I went. They were for the pinball machines. I’d worked like a dog at jobs I despised for years to save up the meager treasure. Who could say it hadn’t been worth it? Everyone knew that the best, most glamorous pinball machines were in the city. My ambition was to get my initials on the leaderboard of the Theater of Magic machine at the bar on Amsterdam Avenue.

What had I become?

“Screw it!” I thought as I threw every last quarter into the open case.

So deep was he in song, the saxophonist didn’t notice. Oh well.

I stayed to get my money’s worth. As my ears followed the music, my eyes wandered to an ancient oak not far from the tunnel’s entrance. I was admiring the way its leaves danced in the wind when the oddest sensation overtook me. It was as though after years of defective vision someone handed me a pair of glasses. Previously I assumed that a tree’s leaves were basically uniform and supposed to blend to form a nondescript entity, a “tree.” Now I saw the subtle complexity of each individual’s relationship to the whole. Grasping the manifold connections simultaneously, I shed the illusion of a distinction between parts and whole. Within anything, no matter how tiny, there always existed the same thing, namely everything, every detail of the cosmos from the beginning to the end of time. Each individual was a reflection of the totality. Therefore, only the totality was real.

It was my dream come true. I could discover the real by delving into the imaginary!

“You mind, my man?” said the saxophonist.

“Excuse me?”

“You were shouting something about leaves.”

I apologized. He just shook his head at me. Most people do. He returned to his sax. While he blew, I wrote a story in my notebook about how giving away all my quarters was the best decision I ever made.

This morning, when I woke up, I reread the story. It was crap. Oh well.

Your fellow madman,

-st