the cold gun barrel is pressed against my temple and -- fuck, i'm getting cliche again.

what can i make different today. what will instill in the reader that familar sense of shock, but that unique feeling of interest and fascination.

i need a new idea, something that will hit the reader so hard in the face that their nose will bleed. how about i listen to a song. song titles inspire stories. "Special Cases." Maybe I can write about an infection. An infection that works its way from the bottom of the heart and up, like stre...shit, I already wrote about that.

Pedestal
Maybe I can write about an aspiring track and field star who wanted to compete so badly and wanted to win so much that he lost his entire teenage years to his training, only to tragically break his ankle after falling from the first place position on the podium he so desperately wanted to stand upon.

Shit, I don't know. Seems like I can only ever write depressing stories. You are what you write. I hope that's not true.

Sand River
Perhaps I can write about a woman stuck in a desert, dying of thirst, surrounded by mirages. But instead of chasing after the mirages, she stood in place, admiring their beauty from afar, the illusion of water just within sight and just out of reach. And she had lived her whole life like this, admiring the things she needed most from afar because she was too afraid to find out that in the end it would all be a lie. And because of this, she missed out on love, friendship, beauty, art, and most importantly, the one mirage that wasn't a mirage at all. The illusion which wasn't a lie. The oasis which stood just beyond her reach, her survival hindered only by her lack of determination and courage.

Yeah, that might work.

Soul Shadows
What kind of story would this make...maybe I can write about a person who never casted a shadow, in both a literal and metaphoric sense. This person lived his entire existence desiring a sense of purpose, of importance in life. He wanted to matter. He wanted to cast upon the ground a shadow so large and influential that even the shadows of skyscapers paled in comparison to his. But just like desire is what drives us, it is also what leads us to disappointment. And he soon realized the truth -- Why no one ever listened to him. Why no one ever acknowledged his existence. Why he never casted a shadow or influenced behavior. Because he did not exist at all -- he was a ghost, a lost soul without a cause, tortured by a lack of purpose, trapped between worlds, too afraid to chase the future, too afraid to understand the present, and unable to accept what he didn't do in the past.

Ghosts are hard to take seriously though.

Damn, I can't get anything on the screen. I remember the days when I had so many ideas that I scribbled them on the paper in the middle of history class, so enthusiastic to express myself that afterwards I couldn't even read what I wrote. But even though my handwriting was illegible, I could still interpret the seemingly meaningless scratches on the paper, like art. It was like shorthand, my own personal language. I knew that this cluster of pen markings meant "essence," or that forest of scribbling meant "perception." They were like music notes. It was my own personal Bic painting that no one else could understand. It was mine.

Black Star
I can write about how everything in our universe becomes inverted. The colors, the morals, the people. But we're better off. We live in a time of harmony even though everything is opposite of what it used to be. Yet everything seems so unfamiliar. We can't recognize the moon or anything else that we once thought was beautiful. And that becomes the great paradox: that if we ever achieve total harmony, we'll ultimately end up rejecting it because we don't recognize it, we're unfamiliar with it, our design is incompatible with it. And we're given a choice: to adapt to the new world of love and harmony, or to reject it and return to the old world of war, disease, and deception. And we choose the latter, not because we have a taste for violence and pain, but because we'll ultimately prefer that familiar little nest we once called home, even if there's a series of landmines under our beds.

One more song title then I'm going to sleep.

Insatiable
No, not the Darren Hayes song. I'm talking pure Prince and the New Power Generation shit. I'll write about how one man was so hungry for more, more, more that he failed to realize what he had in front of him. It's a cliche story, but it can work if I write about it properly. I can write about how this man threw away everything he had in his pursuit for the unattainable. He was a man with everything. He had a six digit income for a job where he didn't have to do shit but lay out in the sun telling women with skimpy bikinis how many cherries to put in his beverage and how far to bend over when setting the drink on the table. He had a garage full of sports cars in brilliant reds and enrapturing blacks. But the cars he never drove, the house he never slept in, and the women he never fucked. Why? Because he was too busy wanting more. His real desire was not having things, it was the pursuit of achieving infinity. He lined up his goals so that when he achieved one, there was another still to come, and another, and another, and the line of goals went on for so long that you couldn't see where it ended, like those perspective exercises in art school. But one day he finally feels that he's done enough. He thinks he's attained all he's ever wanted. He's satisifed with what he's accomplished. But low and behold...that feeling isn't satisfying. He is disappointed with satisfaction. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Why? Because satisfaction is determined by what you're chasing. Because all that time, he was chasing the things he thought would eventually make him happy. You see, the level of satisfaction you want to achieve is directly related to the importance of what it is you're chasing. And all that time, he was oblivious to the fact that he was never content. He wasted his life chasing pointless things. Cars, houses, diamonds, antiques, fancy art. And he went on to die, only to be outlived by the things which will never tell a story, except the story that one man found these petty, inanimate objects to be the most important things in life. He went on to die not as an individual, but as a person who realized what he wasted when it was already too late. He went on to die realizing that he missed out on the one thing which could've lived up to the massive expectations of what he thought satisfaction felt like. He died realizing that the only way he could've ever achieved the satisfaction he wanted deep down inside was not to pursue his love for things that he could collect in mass quantities, but to pursue the emotion of love for just one individual in his lifetime.

And now, if you'll excuse me, it has become frighteningly apparent to me that what started out as writer's block has transformed into something which has altered my outlook on life, at least for the time being. I am becoming dangerously close to solving the mysteries of the universe, and it is right about now that I attempt to fall asleep to remain ignorant of humanity's purpose. The weaver of my dreams is tugging away at my eyelids, seducing me to her palace, her world where anything is possible, where I can simultaneously fly high and kiss the ground, a world so beautiful that I have no choice but to be disappointed when I awaken, for it is our mere sense of consciousness that natural law binds us.