If Nothing Else, I Will Have at Least Written This Sentence: Sentences from an Unwritten Novel

It was time to step away and invest sentences into the actual thing.

She packed up and vacated the offices of her past for a much better lease on the future.

Deposits had been made, checks had been cashed, and now all of his accounts were overdrawn.

He was as casual in casual conversation as it gets.

She had a voice--the kind that could translate well via live stage, recording studio, smart phone, walkie talkie, tin can....

He had been hoping for a little more asteroid.

After a long pause, he ordered a Happy Meal and a chocolate shake topped with whipped cream and a procrastination berry.

Hopping backward to a younger, carefree day, she sprang forth with confidence and joy.

The days, weeks and months were mapped upon his haggard face like the imprint of a wrinkled sheet.

Given to daydreams, he often found that his focus on the moment had to wait for a minute.

She looked a little bit like Monica Vitti with a bad perm.

He loathed the expression rusted shut .

He sat on the couch near the back window, drinking his coffee with a closed book on his lap, and listened.

Her opinions and observations concerning the crumbling infrastructure of a lost and reeling society were sure to be a best seller.

He shamelessly lied to himself about the reputable clinical research that supported the benefits of including a coffee cake muffin with a cream cheese center in one's daily morning diet.

He had never really been able to discover a decent antidote for writer's block.

She was aware that there were forests where trees and plants and other organisms wouldn't grow.

He had entered one of those sterile waiting rooms where all creativity was put on hold.

He couldn't resist a glazed or chocolate-frosted donut.

She constantly reminded him that his generalizations had to be drawn up over and over with each new set of circumstances.

What the films had taught his generation is that there should always be music, at the very least noise--in the background, middle ground, foreground: that silence is artificial.

What stood out and remained with most people was how the cowlick at the crown of his head matched the colicky behavior at the heart of his personality.

It wasn't uncommon for him to become totally bogged down with his blogging.

She argued calmly and confidently and carefully before the executive board, as if cruising through a neighborhood filled with playing children, that terrible, self-absorbed drivers were spurring the need for rapid advancements in driverless automotive technologies.

When he switched from Google to Google+, he wound up minus something.

She gaped out of the rain-streaked window contemplating how she could help the men feel more comfortable with her extremely high level of knowledge and expertise without furthering their deep-seated feelings of inferiority.

He shuddered to think what other intelligent life would conclude about them based upon topical analyses of film and television studies.

The made-for-television series confirmed what she already knew--that there was as much misogyny embedded in the culture as sugar on sugar-coated cereals, or poppy and sesame seeds on everything bagels, or cinnamon and sugar on cinnamon donuts.

He hoped that if he fell flat on his face there would be a banana cream pie on the ground.

He was hoping to discover the hallmark of quietude in the country beyond the orange groves.

Ideas came to her mind the way mail arrived in the mailbox.

When the alien interrogation was over, they left her in a soft clearing in the woods about a mile from her house with some nice parting gifts.

Who didn't chase a cheese cake muffin with a strong cup of coffee?

And for his sins, he only allowed himself to eat sugarless cereals in the morning (not true).

They met on their lunch breaks--two artists in their own rights--and wandered together through the museum and talked, vaguely aware of the art.

She insisted on starting each day with a cup of French-pressed coffee, a croissant and the voice of the diva.

He never grew tired of his Pop Art books.

It was all French toast to him.

She treasured the moments he was able to break out of his lugubrious philosophical stand up.

If after all of that laughter he found nothing funny, then he would at least bask in the satisfaction of having put forth a Herculean effort.

He was definitely in over his head, but it felt familiar.

She laughed in his face.

He felt good about it.

He knew that this country's biggest issue was greed, and that many, many other issues could be tackled if greed could be eliminated from the equation.

She wasn't down with all of this fancy schmancy bullshit.

He told the young mother on the cafe patio that she might want to cover her children's eyes and look away while he devoured his chocolate chip muffin.

After all of the blood work came back, his doctor concluded that he was suffering from a poetry deficiency, and, after subjecting him to a brief questionnaire, prescribed Ginsberg, O'Hara, Koch and Wakoski.

She understood him better than anyone else.

Between the scrambled eggs and fluffy pancakes, he discovered a Slim Jim --not quite what you were thinking.

Sometimes he wanted information; sometimes he wanted entertainment.

Now, as he aged, a certain cache of memories began to strike him as too absurd or outrageous to have actually occurred, and yet the very unlikelihood of the substance of these recollections is precisely what gave them a sense of credibility, despite the unreliability of his memory, because he knew, to his dismay, that his imagination would be hard pressed to create the lines, shapes and values of these particular shades.

He thoroughly enjoyed not how but that  Ke$ha rhymed "saber-toothed tiger" with "warm Budweiser."

His proximity to the heavens and stars after camping in the Berkshires intensified his desire to "get off the grid."

She needed to "get to the lake" or camp at least once every summer in order to endure the cabin fever of winter.

He had been subjected to a spot check while wearing  his favorite plaid jacket.

As his understanding of time was altered--i.e., when he became aware that no one, including himself, escaped--his concept of time became more scrambled and abstract, less tangible.

During quiet moments, like early in the morning or late at night, as she sat at the table sipping coffee or lay in bed trying to sleep, listening to a train, she felt like a portal through which incoherent and indecipherable transmissions from undiscovered dimensions were emitted.

He walked places.

It had always been important that he had been right in front of the stage, pushed right up against the edge, or in the front row, right below the lead singer, since he would never be in the spotlight.

She was in her greatest element on the longest night of the year, and she could feel her powers intensify.

He stoically dedicated the show to those who had gone before, and to those who could see with their eyes closed, and then they began to play without another word to each other or anyone else for the rest of the night.

After he peeled back the pink strip of hair on the cyborg's head, he wished he had selected a different sort of nightmare.

The neon lights and tinted, reflective windows, the colorful newspaper boxes and fire hydrants, the crappy graffiti and commercial signage of the strip embodied the hues of her soul as seen in her eyes.

Not even a bottle of Coca-Cola could strip the garlic from his breath.

It was fair to say that he had, and continued to, borrow from Jasper Johns, believing that he might as well borrow, since everyone did, from the best.

She didn't let little things like runny eggs ruin her day.

He took the heat like a neatly folded square of paper tucked into his pocket.

The whole gig revolved around the fact that he could see, as a boy, that he had been born Ojibwa but hadn't been raised as if; the rupture in identity, as a result, had been huge.

She found it hard to explain that writing was as abstract as living to people who didn't write.

He wondered what she was doing, even though she was only on the other side of town, and found it hard to comprehend that other people were doing other things while he typed.

He found the commercials to be better than the programs.

The day was an organism which he adapted to his needs and desires.

Day in and out, he relied upon the casserole to balance the humane with the existential; today was no exception, and so, viola!

He needed a drink.

When he was young, he complemented some of the most memorable and infamous events of his life, some of them planned, some of them accidents, mistakes or misfortunes, with shocking, unforgettable haircuts.

He had had a belt with ersatz Native American bead work on it when he was a boy that had actually made him feel less indigenous than people would believe he actually was.

During the warm, sunny interim of the day, he often sat erect at his desk on the eighty-seventh floor like an android and stared out of the large plate-glass windows over the city and went to a place where although he could be seen and observed by the other partners and secretaries and visitors, if they happened to glance into his office, he couldn't be found.

She had a hunch that the tenant in 24B was a simulacrum in the strictest sense, combining artificial intelligence with biologic features.

Sometimes he tried to match natural forces with an army of synthetic cliches.

The reservoir burst unexpectedly, and after the flood waters dissipated, they discovered that he had become a casualty in the pent up zeitgeist of the 90s.

Her garlicky croutons sailed on a wave of Caesar dressing atop a bed of sea-colored lettuce.

He applied copious amounts of sunscreen on the exposed segments and hemispheres of his body before demanding anything of the sun.

His lyrics gained power because of his adamant unwillingness to defend their obvious lack of strength.

She applied for a visa to another genre because she was sick of the short story she was living.

He woke up without a theme this morning and therefore felt inclined to stay indoors.

He was certain that he would love her when she was no longer young and beautiful, and went so far as to say so, although it was over the phone, so maybe a little removed?

She'd argued with him in public because after dinner he'd insisted that she had been born to live.

Lana called and they talked for a while, and he confided that he did indeed actually have that summertime sadness, but it wasn't true.

When he imagined having lunch with his favorite painter, it played out as follows: a lunch meeting at a shaded outdoor cafe, coffee, a light meal, a few brief casual remarks about a recent opening or exhibition, a beer, a newspaper, a convoluted inner monologue concerning the night before, a syncing of watches, a napkin, a handshake--as if old friends.

She refused to knowingly contribute to the burgeoning stupefaction of the masses.

Afflictions and maledictions aside, he was having a good day.

It wasn't a crime to carry cans of spray paint around in one's backpack, but it wasn't the smartest, and for this he'd paid the price.

She had never cared what others thought; she would've dated that punk rock boy in a heartbeat.

He had written a short story that featured a character who went around to public libraries to rip out the last pages of modern classics only to discover that one of his closest friends was secretly guilty of such deviant behavior; everything had already been done.

He sped onward and wished well all of the trains departing from the Grand Central Station of his mind.

She imagined that in a post apocalyptic scenario there would be very little inhibition, if any, which both thrilled and terrified her.

He felt a bird fly in and heard maybe a voice as a door opened within.

The omnipresent amplification of music in all aspects of society--malls, elevators, gas station pumps, cafe patios, ipods, commercials, films, birthday cards, caskets--resulted in a "soundtrack without end", making life seem more like a take on a reality TV show or a scene from "this summer's greatest experience" than the real deal: made him wonder in moments of unbelievable and unexpected silence if he was in fact asleep and struggling somewhere in his subconsciousness to inform himself that "it [was] only a dream."

She wasn't planning on comparing notes with anyone; in the future, everyone could look at hers, if they wanted to.

He looked at the sparrow on the wrought iron rail and realized it was actually there.

He had read Walker Percy's debut novel, The Moviegoer , for five consecutive summers before it had occurred to him that a fascination with the novel's spiritually bankrupt protagonist suggested a defect in the machinery of his own psychology.

After hearing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for about twenty seconds--the first time he had heard a song by them--he knew that they would not only be huge, but important, as well.

He had carried Salinger's Franny and Zooey around in his backpack for about a year and a half, just before turning twenty, pulling it out and skimming passages from it when he had found himself in empty bus stops and sterile train stations, or when he was just plain bored in a library study carrel or a bagel shop, knowing eventually he would inevitably suffer the same spiritual and existential breakdown and wind up on the Glass family's Manhattan living room sofa--minus a lecture from Zooey, of course, in his case (he wouldn't be that fortunate)--Franny's beloved cat, Bloomberg, nudging and pawing his chest and sniffing his breath and purring in his face, with any luck.

As the spacecraft reentered the Earth's atmosphere, already having transmitted all of its data and spectacular imagery, he asked himself, "Where is the joy?"

It was clear that she had been born with a certain amount of style and grace and rarely had to give it a second thought.

He had a hard time relating to people who belonged to what Albert Camus referred to as "The Cult of the Serious."

Unable to play any instruments, unable to write anything original, unable to predict the next look, they settled for losing themselves in the packed audiences of intimate concerts.

He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to duplicate a face he had made thirty years ago but it was useless.

They had often talked about forming a band during their student years, while at dinner, or while lying about the dorm, or while walking across campus, but none of them had actually had any talent, and they couldn't have been convinced that they collectively possessed enough good looks to fake it, as evidenced by a lack of anything vaguely resembling romance, or even squalor, in their uneventful daily lives.

Halfway through the interview he got up to use the restroom, slipped down a back stairway and kept on walking.

Was she always barefoot because she enjoyed it, or because her parents wanted her in shoes?

His grandfather had taken him, a true city boy, to his cousin's flower farm when he was young and he'd hated it, the isolation of it all, the sickening vegetation, but now he could see himself living in the middle of a flat plowed nowhere where the only protection was the vast open absence of protection, and the brown cloud of someone approaching could be spotted two or three miles away, giving him plenty of time to grab his poetry, set the fire and run.

He couldn't listen to "Taps" without tearing up.

She opened the bill and slapped her forehead.

As with any project, it eventually became his distraction.

His texts were becoming more and more parenthetical everyday.

She ordered the last bottle of wine.

He rejoiced in the beehive of memory.

Sometimes while sitting on the patio at the cafe with his notebooks and a strong cup of coffee, he would imagine that he was joined by Jean-Michel Basquiat--smoking, and on something, of course--and together the two of them would talk about Picasso, ethnicity and popular culture.

She loved Miro for his kinky lyricism.

On a clear Saturday morning, a little Louis Armstrong, a bit of Miles Davis, a dash of Dave Brubek, perhaps, was all it took to jazz up an otherwise fairly ordinary batch of scrambled eggs.

He distanced himself from a bad memory lingering from the day before by eating a hearty sub.

Now, at the age of forty-six, when he looked at the place where he had usually seen himself, he saw instead the absence of himself.