I walked by a beautiful church on ninth street and saw, through the stained-glass windows, the high ceilings. I stopped there on the sidewalk and thought about it to see if I could come up with something.

I thought to myself, “There is something about those high ceilings.” It is something similar to this that I think right before I write, usually.

“There is something about …” But I am stumped, sometimes, as I was when I stood on ninth street trying to write about the angels in the high ceilings or the music that echoed from the choir

—ideas from my childhood of churchgoing, which are like splotches of oil in artistic waters,

as if the divine words I was looking for were tucked into the missals (that I refused to open) in the pews (that I refused to kneel in).

I could not write about anything other than how I could not write—and so I wrote this.