Ever since I read Leif Enger’s awesome Peace Like a River, and Stant Litore’s What Our Eyes Have Witnessed, I’ve almost felt like the farce I was going to write now feels . . . um, well . . . farcical.

But now, my kind has hit upon something possibly cooler, more complex, somewhat serious, and may have some existential echoes of something-or-other in it, too.

Enger’s influences named at the end of his book seem to cut across the plains.  But then I realized, so do mine.  I seriously have no need to be like anybody else.  So now, I’ll maintain my curiosity about what other do to conjure the old inspirational wellspring, but beyond that I’m just going to go with what I know: I am a complete mess of a human being, and I will, like the gravitational boomerang effect utilized by Apollo 13, bring something amazing out of whatever inertia I do have, from wherever it comes from.

I’ll also stop ending sentences with a preposition.