Anno Mirabilis

"That year, the amapas bloomed twice."

It could be the opening line of a Hemingway novella. Better yet, of a Garcia Marquez novel ("One Hundred Years of Pulchritude," 697 pages). It drips of portent, of matters metaphysical or theological - an anno mirabilis, eternal recurrence, a great awakening, a second chance, the Second Coming, a renaissance, another Great Revival (god forbid) - something grander and laden with meaning beyond merely a summer of good rains. This winter, the amapas really did bloom twice.

What to make of that? Probably just the good luck of the summer rains. But still, the line seems too good to leave at that, to simply throw away or consign to the dustbin of mundane cause and effect. It's too good to waste, too allusive not to want to see what could happen with it in successive pages of, say, Hemingway or Faulkner or V. Woolf.

Would it be a light be a light tale or a dark one; remain brightly optimistic, perhaps turn sinister? Surely it deserves to be followed by more than a gardening memoir or a "Guide to the Trees and Shrubs of Sonora." It begs a metaphysical turn, a tale (dark, one hopes) involving Chaos, the Fates, the titans, the valkyries, the shekhinah, the cyclops and harpies and lokis, immanences that bedevil our lives and jar us in our daily transit.

For my part I don't know what to do with it, not being inclined to writing novels, or novellas for all of that. I can see nothing else for it but to offer it gratis to any takers, and let it have its head.