Simplicity

Max sat hunched over his paper. "Gawd, it's hard to put anything down anymore."

He sat for while looking out his window, but it quickly degenerated into an empty gaze. There was never anything to put down on paper. All that is never was, and all that was not ever wasn't either. It all seemed so simple.

The trees were swaying ever so slightly, being restrained, however, by the fact they were leafless. The lack of leaves made them unable to whisper those same truths Max had been so desperately trying to translate into words that everyone could understand. It was so simple in theory, but it was obvious that too many people were afraid of what the trees might say. It's not an uncommon problem, but a chronic one.

Max got up and went to the window so he could get a better view of those same things he had been looking at for so long now. They never changed, or so it seemed. He couldn't imagine why no one ever saw that. It seemed so obvious, yet here he was trying to get it across to those vast, unseen, faceless masses who really couldn't care less if they knew about it or not. Stagnation oozed through the window.

Everything he saw was saying the same thing at the same time and all those voices quieted themselves into a hushed chorus of unimaginable harmony.

"It is all too simple," he thought, "when taken as a whole, it is beyond expression, and when taken one thing at a time, it becomes garbled. No wonder so many artists decide to shoot themselves."

Max never entertained suicidal thoughts himself. There didn't seem to be much point in it. Disillusioned drunks were a dime a dozen. Lonely people went for half the price. Max knew which category he fit into.

"It's not so bad being lonely," he figured. "Hell, there must be millions of us out there – somewhere."