“Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” ~Sigmund Freud PROLOGUE — “The Bookend” — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Peering over her stylish Liz Claiborne frames, the doctor’s penetrating green eyes looked past the crying patient in front of her, who was currently going on ad nauseum about the same trauma she had already spoken of a thousand times before. [“And then the next thing I knew my father was gone…how could he just abandon me like that…my mother was broken.”] Her

“Though man loved his fellow [man], yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.” ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick I can’t remember if the weather was bad that day or if my memory of the event is just foggy. What I can recall is a long street. On one side, a brick wall runs as far as the eye can see. The brick is a dark, almost ominous brown. If ever a construction material could represent the atmosphere, it is this, here. A shadow

Prologue A writer’s life is a lonely one — so much time is spent in solitude — apart from the outside world. Hours are consumed by days, and just as quickly days are gobbled up by months. Holidays and full moons sit like food crumbs on time’s cold, hungry lips. All these lonely hours of writing lead the people in your life (the few who are willing to put up with your constant absence) to reach out to you from time to time. “So how’s your writing going?” Each of my parents wil

“Okay, Professor! We’re coming down!” I heard a student shout from the second floor window, just above me, as I was entering the Hamilton building for my three o’clock class. I then turned to look in the direction the bespectacled student was shouting. I saw a man in his early to mid-forties with long sandy blond hair and a messier, slightly darker beard that was starting to gray at its bristly ends. This guy is a professor? I thought to myself. It sure was strange to see a c

Were his teeth missing or were they just stained? If it was the latter, they were the darkest brown imaginable. It was also difficult to tell where his beard ended, and where the mat of his salt and pepper chest hair began. It was like the laws of physics ceased to exist in that bristled old mane; the hair was, at once, so dry it looked like you could snap the ends right off, while at the same time it always seemed sticky and damp. No one knew who he was or when exactly he ar

I am up, but I am not yet awake. The sun has yet to rise; the night still lurks in the shadows. If it weren’t for the bird chirping outside, there would be no sign at all that the day was dawning. Even the clock is more confusing than informative right now. It has one of those once-a-day times on it. In that, I usually only see a time like “4:37” once a day. What does it all mean? I forget myself as I stare blankly at the numbers on the clock from my spot on the edge of my be