Ahead of me is the climax. Everything must have its climax, however small, but distinct. The climax is even more important than the beginning and the end. Who really knows how it is with beginnings and endings—maybe they don’t exist at all, a climax must.

But what is a climax? Not an easy matter. It varies. It can be a peak, it can be a pit. A surge or a thinning out, noise or silence, or something else entirely—simply the return of something after a time, in new company, and through that juxtaposition—with what has been and is stored in memory and with what’s new here and now—sudden illumination, emotion, shock, awe, and so on.

Climaxes are like conjunctions and eclipses. They lend an air of significance and grandeur to random points in time and space. You can’t believe your luck when you find yourself in such a point. It’s hard not to read meaning into the event, and not to draw conclusions from it for the future and for the past. And you can do that—why not. You have to hold on to something in this dome without walls and without a bottom.

Ahead of me is the climax.