I stood erect and listened for the sound I knew would come. Straining like a lifter to catch the first airy note. Roberta and Juan coiled like snakes around the core of their mad hope. Longstreth picking banjo and singing country songs. Felix mixing the elixer of existence. Constance dancing from fence to fix. Glen picked up a pocked and rusted chunk of castoff machinery. Some literary device long past its usefulness. He cast it upon the waters. It sank without a trace. An Indian weaver sitting stringing ancient beads to form tokens of primitivism for sale to tourists. Little Rebecca with her nose pressed to the windowpane. Ice floes with their unwilling cargoes of hapless sea lions. Killer whales surfacing, breaking the ice into daiquiris; with all the sea lion blood and their pitiful wails. Me? I was just trying to express myself in my haphazard and ill-disciplined way.