A Tale Too Shitty: An Autobathography

It was the best of baths; it was the worst of baths. Despite having been reminded, not so much of mortality or aging as of pain itself, by getting up out of bed the wrong way, my bathing satisfaction had, as if to compensate, increased beyond my wildest expectations. As though the waters were expanding through space to equalize universal injustice. Or perhaps just to throw me off the Cynic's path.
Pure Cashmere loomed above me from the shower walls like some Softsoap candle lighting the way to a cleaner, softer me as hot tea spilled down my chin into the waters. No need to stop it. I ignored a voice that told me not to dab my chin with a towel. Strauss' Also Spake Zarathustra so recently reminding me that I am not an ape. (We had been to the symphony the night before.)
A friend, over breakfast, revealed that when Homer (of Simpson, not Odyssey fame) circled the stadium on his motorcycle, he had recalled dreams of flying that he had never before had the opportunity to acknowledge--indeed these dreams had never before revealed themselves to his conscious mind--and opened up memories of imaginary places visited and revisited in the night.
In his story, The Expelled, Beckett says:
Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are
dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the
danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little. That is to say, you must
think of them for a while, a good while, every day several times a day, until
they sink forever in the mud. That's an order.

I laid the book on the side of the tub when I had finished and, letting my head sink below the water line, listened to the amplified sound of my breathing and the ancient creaking of my spine as I shifted, not uncomfortably, in that limited space. I couldn't get out of the tub because I wasn't in it. It took a while. Finally, if nothing more, my toe returned to reality and flicked the drain. It was disobeying orders, but I spared its life, seeing as I was feeling particularly self-satisfied and artistic at that moment.(Artists are a self-satisfied lot. They like to act like they aren't. Hence, the tortured artist.) My hearing returned to normal as the waters went down. My back formed a suction with the bottom of the tub and I made repeated fart-like noises as I stuck and unstuck my wet back to the bathtub floor. I didn't even giggle.
Albert, the cat, usually flees the bathroom as soon as the blow dryer makes its noisy appearance. Today, he stuck around for a few moments, jumping atop the lattice-work encasing the radiator. I reached down to pet him with my free hand and puffs of hot air must have reached his little pink nose. He ran.