I set out for the Metropolitan Museum of art with a plan in my head and a spring in my step. Gorgeous, springtime weather. Notebook in bag, bag on back. Some bouncy tunes to keep the pace (Apples in Stereo or Lyrics Born, something with a driving beat and solid production). A pen in my pocket, almost dripping ink in anticipation. The knowledge that some sentences sound lascivious, even if you didn't mean for them to be at all. A mental image, clear as the motherfuckin' sky above me: it goes me, the roof of the Met, a seat on a bench, a coffee next to me, aforementioned pen against aforementioned notebook scratching with ferocity, some thoughtful music to spur me forward (Bach or Hildegard von Bingen, something with, uh, cellos. Or chanting.), and departing some hours later with a piece of writing so beautiful and brilliant as to change lives, and bring smiles to sour faces.

It would start like this, my amazing piece of writing:

Setting: Roof Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Time: Early Afternoon (I would have been more specific)
Weather: Clear as a motherfuckin' crystal
Reason for equating clarity with Oedipal urges: unknown, but possibly meaningful
Mood: Instilled with a spirit of positive energy that feels very much like joy
Side Effects: Suspicion at a) such nice weather this late in the year and b)this sudden, intense feeling of solid good.
The surroundings: Here, I launch into a stunning examination of the city around me. The park stretching away toward the towers on the West Side. The museum and what it means to me. Analysis of sudden optimism. Description of almost certainly bitter coffee and the cool wind on my exposed hand. Beautiful, elegant turns of phrase. Verbs and nouns positively scintillating. A personal note to look up the spelling of scintillating. Everything succulent, sweet, and aggravatingly alliterative (but in an alluring way). Language so clear, it's like you were balls deep in Jocasta. A tiny portrait of a city and of me in relation to it, how each completes the other and how each is truly more than its whole. This shit would spiral with brilliant wizardry of craft and language and at its climax would break down the very rules it had just established! Suddenly free-form! Then suddenly structured! The lines begin to evoke more than describe. They run into one another and disperse, like so many... things that run into another and then disperse. Suddenly meter... then better meter! Suddenly rhyme! This shit is in rhyme now! The language was too much for the form, see, it had to burst through, charge through, break down and rebuild from nothing until it achieved something new and great! Oh, and then it ended like this:

I cast myself about me
And I realize I'm home
And I smile because intended prose
Turned into a poem or something, I meant this ending is pretty weak, but it wouldn't have been if I had written it in the roof garden of the Met, with the coffee and the wind and the music and the view and all this beauty!

So I decided to grab lunch first, because who can write on an empty stomach? I wanted food to go, because I wanted to sit in the park to, you know, start preparing my senses for the lyrical onslaught I was about to transfer to the page. But every place I stopped in front of, every promising establishment that caught my eye, failed to hold my attention for more than a second. Failed to provide within me that sudden spark of inspiration. My initial desire to obtain a simple meal was replaced by a flood of doubt. Surely, I thought, the moment that I finally caved to the purchase of lesser food, I would suddenly turn and see The Perfect Place! The place with a meal that was literally perfect. Alas, it would have been too late! I would have already chosen a meal, a poorly selected sack of what could loosely be called "goods." And I would stare longingly at something tantalizing separated from me by a sheet of glass and a decision made in haste. The thought of returning tomorrow to secure this second, perfect meal was impossible! Perhaps this place, like Brigadoon, open only one day in every hundred years to serve their manna to an unsuspecting hunter, and tomorrow the restaurant and everything it promised would return to mist, never to be seen in this lifetime.

I wandered several blocks past the museum, searching in vain for this mythical meal. I finally conceded. If I did not select a meal soon, I wouldn't have the time I needed to craft my poetic masterpiece. It also dawned on me that even if I did manage to find something so perfect, it's not like I would necessarily be able to afford it. After all, I was on Madison Avenue, in the eighties. I settled on an imperfect place, and I selected an imperfect and almost painfully pretentious sandwich that featured on its packaging a description of the method of tomato preparation, and no less than three adjectives to describe the cheese. This sandwich I could afford... barely. I stepped forward to the counter, and discovered that I had literally left my wallet in my other pants.

I apologized, blushed, and headed home. Headed home with every intention of returning. I retrieved my money and started to leave again, but by then the day was just a little bit more dull, the wind just a little bit colder. The clarity of my spirit now significantly less incestuous. The walk before me long, and the television singing its tantalizing siren's song. The possibility of having food delivered to me shockingly attractive. I settled into the easy chair, and I reached for the phone with one hand and the remote control with the other.

Right then and there, that imagined masterpiece-- like so many before it-- died, providing whole new levels of meaning to the term cardiac arrest.