An Argument

When you said that you wanted to be useful as the days of the week, I said, “God bless you.” Then you said you would not trade our Mondays, useful for two thousand years, for the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. I said, “Endless are the wonders to which I can only say ‘ah,’ that our ‘Ah’ who art in heaven can easily become the ‘ah, ah’ that comforts a baby.” Then you said, “Go make a living on metaphors for ‘ah,’” that I, a lunatic, secretly want to be the Lighthouse of Alexandria, a fifty-story-high collaboration of art and science, a mirror of light that might be seen five or ten days out to sea, Poseidon standing on my shoulders, the Library of Alexandria at my back, all the wonders of Greek Africa. I said, “Today is Monday. I want little more than to be a hand-mirror my wife carries in her purse with a hankie to stop my hemorrhaging humility.”