I’m riveted to a daydream that plays over and over again in my brain. I swim laps to it in the backyard pool, remembering awkward shadow daydreams of ten years ago. A fat bird struts on the power line and I try to laugh about it. I see you, fat bird!—and I try to shake the daydream beast off. Clouds stream over the mountain and break up into sunshine rays; construction workers in the arroyo chainsaw to salsa music. Fat bird sings. Everything is laid out for me—everything is ready for the laugh.

But I’m too serious today. I am downright grim.

I go get Nietzsche, the most hilarious man. He may need some extra effort from me right now, I know, so I flip to a juicy aphorism and visualize all his Over-men as Over-clowns—it is an honest attempt, it came to me last night—there are carnival overtones—but I watch as, to my horror, the clown remains serious. He is an unshaven hobo clown, too tired for tricks tonight, just wants to smoke his stogey.

“Everything sinks.” he tells me. It’s the new law of the circus, “Even your mother, full of blubber: she sinks like a stone!” And he laughs an evil, serious, rasping hobo clown laugh.

This might be a conspiracy, I think. It might be a change in the laws of physics. I knew things wouldn’t sit still for me in El Paso. I run back to the pool and throw in a stick. It sinks like lead. This is why the pool looked so clean! I realize. No bugs float on the top.

The guilt sets in. Maybe I did this—I might have when I turned everything into clowns. I dreamt it last night and now I’ve gone and done it. I don’t think things through.

I run back inside. Nietzsche, I say, I take it all back. No good comes from the carnival! I flip open my journal and cross out a whole paragraph of crap. ‘Universal clowns’, ‘shrunken levity’—fuck me. I deserve this.

Then I rush back outside again with another stick.

It sinks. Damn.