She was like a maiden. Long dark tresses in halo of curls and light shown around her. It was hard to get a good look at her face. I had seen beauty in a dream. I turned to my wife of 19 years and wanted to puke. I despised her. I climbed out of bed and left my home. First, I went to bars and drank hoping to find a beauty to match my dreams, but to what purpose?

The quest to find her had been long. I had traveled through the dark pines with scrub bushes and I had climbed the trees to see the mountain where I headed. I had made a raft of light and hardy woods and careened down rapids becoming soaked so that my clothing offered no protection. I had fallen on the ground and bled. I knew my purpose then...to go home to find beauty.

I had left home years ago- 21 to be exact. It had not been hard because I felt pulled by adventure, and hoped to see the world. I had found out that I'm a homebody and wherever I go I make a home and settle in and get to know the locals. Pretty soon 21 years go by and I'm "a local" too. Its hard to describe the dream that made me leave my second home and I try so hard to find her, beauty.

I think to my wife, a red head. who cried when I left home and I wonder how she is fairing without me to take care of the home we made. 

I am worn out. My breath is jagged and I find that sometimes I pass out without cause- or a cause I recognize. I believe it is exhaustion. This mission to find beauty consumes me. I noticed my sweater was uneven and had unraveled. Like I had.

The cares of the world. My daily life do not reach me. I'm a traveler and alone. A quest for a person I know not and am not even sure exists. Sometimes my heart expands and and contracts in milliseconds and I lose my breath. I suck in air and I find I'm under water. I find I'm bobbing in a lake.

Not sure how I got there. It is rimmed with lily pads that crowd me. Fish nibble on my shoes which by now are so worn that there are literally held on by stripes of cloth. I desire to live, but how is life not.

My life is consumed. Inhaled and withers. I want life. I want my darling wife. I want to go home. I grab the nearest lily pad. They must be three feet across. I rip through it and slowly in garbled motions I clutch that which is lax and wanes. The vines or root system underneath seem to reach for my face and hands. 

I fight and find no breath of air. Only lake water that feels me so and then...I look to the light. I do not see anything. Any beauty. I just see an outline of a man.

My father holds my hand as I move along a corridor. I find no other figures and my father does not speak. He looms over me and I slowly relax. I look down and I'm in my favorite suit. The teal suit with a deep deep purple wide cut tie. With my blonde hair I look like a lost tough guy from Dick Tracey comics, and I laugh. No hat. My hair is long and thick and ringed with curls. I've never found a hat better than my own hair.

My laughter fills the lighted corridor. It ripples out and I find beauty in the moment.  My father's hand drops mine and I find I'm on the shore the moon is devishly high and ringed in red. It is full and covered by clouds.

I decided to stay there and sleep. Certainly I can find a way to trap those nibbling fish and I decide nothing. I feel pulled to beauty. I want her so bad. I go rigid and erect.

New symptom.

Slumber courts me and birds wake me up. I am ready. I want to go home and I renounce beauty, her dark curls no longer sway my mind.

My gut cries for food. I weep. I don't know. I scream my name. I scream my poision that is now leaking from me. I know. I loved that which is not. I sought that which is good for poetry and madmen and madwomen. I weep unconsoled and weave a net for the nibbling fish. I don't know where I am. I cannot go home. So, I decided to make a new home. I'm so terribily lonely.

Where are people?

Oh, I see one. Its a little boy who put a ship. A very small ship on the lake. He holds a remote control. Is the boy smiling? Where are his parents? Is it just he and just me?

I hear the purring of the motor. The boy is three feet from me. I walk to him and through him.

I weep and laugh and I know that I'm dead. How long I know not. By what wretched means did my life leave me? Beauty has not the ability to hold my interests forever.

I lower my net to catch ghost nibbling fish. Calmness sets in and I breath and smile. No wonder I'm in my favorite suit.