Excerpt from chapter: The Middle of the End

"Life needs to begin for me now."

This is the thought that accompanies me daily while I drip though another apathetic day of Southern drawl. Words drool around me wetting me with their semantic lapses, only to be occasionally marred by a distant, dispassionate British accent. Rudderless, I drift through the day. I am exiled to an office and a phone-relegated to the modern-day, electronic leper colony safely offshore. The only record of my passage is a phone bill and the intangible detritus of emails I leave strewn in computers across the world.

I work in an antiquated building that floats near a regional airport next to the water. Its structure and age pay a mute homage to Florida's history. This state was not habitable before the advent and widespread acceptance of air conditioning. When that happened in the 50's or 60's, suddenly this wild, sticky-hot bastion, that happened to be a state, was rendered friendly to humanity for permanent occupancy and employment. The exterior of the building is white. The interior is white. My office is white. The employees are whitewashed.

I look like the rest of them. My skin is sun-starved and sallow: too many days adrift on a raft to an island that will never appear on the horizon with no nourishment to relieve my soul scurvy. I sound like the rest of them: the words that leave my parched throat are a direct reflection of my parched soul. I feel like the rest of them: dry, doughy, and insubstantial. There is a septic anesthetic that pervades the atmosphere and our lives, numbing our sense of self.