Unlike many people, I do not have an unfettered imagination. I thought I did but I don't. Of course my thinking this way might itself be imaginary, in fact this bizarre notion might be strong evidence of my imagination's truly unfettered nature. Who can tell where the boundaries of the imagination are? There are no clear signs, no pebbled surfaces. I fail to imagine many things but what things? If I knew them I wouldn't have failed to imagine them. The human mind is capable of great imaginings. Copernicus. I'm sure there are others. Right now someone is imagining something that might very well change the course of etc etc, or forever alter the way we look at etc etc. I am not that someone, not now anyway. I might be, tomorrow. After I get back from the store. Or never. Probably never. Who knows. I could stumble onto something big, or trip over it, or back into it, or run over it repeatedly with a car that I am struggling to put in reverse. I could be a clumsy hero of the imagination. Jack Klugman. My imagination is limited, in ways I do not comprehend. If I were more imaginative maybe I could understand how I'm less imaginative. I'm worried that my imagination's limitations are in precisely the areas I need it to be expansive and unfettered. What if these limitations are intrinsic to my abilities? Would it be worse if they were externally imposed, perhaps by faulty living, poor diet, too many drugs? I didn't take too many drugs. I ate a lot of breakfast cereal though, the bad kind, at any old time of the day or night. Empty calories. Or a blow to the head. My father used to jokingly apologize for dropping me on the head when I was a baby, whenever I couldn't find the right word or hesitate in answering a question he'd laugh and say sorry for dropping you on the head when you were a baby. What if that really happened? The dropping I mean. That makes him an even bigger prick than I always thought. It's possible he never said that, I could be imagining it. I could be imagining a lot of things. Couldn't I?