White
I
Drain
An Observation by Gloria Garfunkel
magine we are looking out the window from a
dark, empty cafe at the blizzard blowing, the flakes
swirling in the lamplight, no one in sight. We both
live nearby in this small northern town and will have
no trouble walking home. As you finish your first cup
of some sort of sweet alcohol and caffeine potient, I’ll order
a second. Then we order a third. I know that’s our limit
because we’re both on medication.
Now let’s get this straight. Who are you and who am I?
You are a troubled individual who thinks you can’t write,
and it’s the only thing you want to do and have put it off
too long in your life, helping others as a psychotherapist
instead of helping yourself. I am your subconscious mind
who knows for sure you have it in you and that your
insecurities stand in the way. As the snow falls heavily and
you are feeling more and more relaxed from the alcohol
and energized by the caffeine, you know I am right, that
if you just let go it will be there, all of it. Famous bipolars
like Virginia Woolf, Sherman Alexie, Beethoven, Byron,
Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Poe, Jackson
A
s a man stood in front of his mirror gazing at the
image of his freshly shaven self, a tree fell on the
power lines outside. All of the lights promptly
went out, and the man’s image disappeared. He
knew he had left his razor lying on the sink, but
he had ceased to see it. He feared he might cut his finger or
worse. There was the possibility that he might knock his razor
off the sink in an attempt to exit the room, and then the blade
might land on his bare foot. In addition, of course it would
land with its sharpest edge aimed downward at his toe, since
things—especially inanimate ones—learn to be aerodynamic
on the fly, as if it is second nature. Indeed, the razor might fall
or slip into the sink where it would become dislodged from
its handle. What a nightmare might then ensue if it were to
shimmy down the drain! Who would get it out of there? When
washing your hands you would remember something sharp
and then look down, but all you would see would be darkness.
A great drain of darkness that would become a citywide
phenomenon at its end. No doubt, it is better not to move at
all, better not to let the blade fall.
Pollock, Robert Shumann, Mark Vonnegut, Francis Ford
Coppola, Abbie Hoffman, Vivien Leigh, Van Gogh, and
on and on never let it stand in their way. People have
overcome much more difficult obstacles. Why let it stop
you?
You have the help you need now, finally a good doctor
who doesn’t change treatment plans ten times in one
session or poisons you with overdoses. You are isolated, but
you do not need others to write. You need yourself. That’s
what you want to do and there is nothing but your own
self-criticism stopping you. Another expensive writing
program isn’t going to do it for you. You have to do it
yourself. Be brave. Take risks. Be your own critic when you
revise, not your own demoralizer.
Remember Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own:
“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have
minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”
Let’s bundle up and make fresh footsteps in the
knee-deep snow and have a fierce snow fight in the flawless
night.
EMILY GRELLE received an M.A. in Russian studies from Stanford University, and she is
GLORIA GARFUNKEL has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University and
currently studying Russian literature in North Carolina. Her work is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry
Review and Zaum. She enjoys the company of children and animals best of all, but when she is with
adults, her drink of choice is a Bloody Mary.
writes flash fiction.
14
THRICE FICTION™ • April 2014
Emily Grelle
Issue No. 10
15