I did not destroy anything in the house although all the time I was packing there was a pulse, a throb in me to destroy things in the house. To cut up my wife’s clothes. To smash the paintings I had bought in the years when the money had been good. To open the faucets and to let them flood and to empty the ashes in the fireplace all over the rugs and to put a knife through the upholstery of the chaise longue and to set fire to the king-sized bed. I did not, after I had packed, do any of these things but what I did do was to go through the house and turn all the lights on. Every lamp, the concave, the convex, every ceiling light, the direct, the indirect, all over the house, the patio lights, the lights in the carport, all the lights there were. The house blazed. It was utterly illuminated. It drew on every circuit. Then I called the cab company for a cab and I waited in the blazing house and I left the house glaring there among all the dark or the quietly lit houses in the neighborhood. The taxi drove me to the airport and that light of my house, that fire I had set but not set, remained in my mind all during the time I waited in the terminal for the big jet to arrive and for my flight to be called. It was ten minutes after midnight when I boarded the plane for New York. I had a window seat. At twelve-thirty it took off. The blue ground lights blurred. As the plane lifted and became airborne, I thought the pain would diminish, but it did not diminish. Perhaps I had not gone far enough yet for it to diminish. I stared at the small square box of the Astrovision set above me. The late news ended. I reached up and turned off the narrow pencil beam of the reading light. I hoped to be enclosed in darkness. We were flying at 37,000 feet. Was that high enough? We were flying at 500 miles an hour. Was that fast enough? What would be fast enough, what would be high enough, what would be far enough, what would be dark enough for where I was going? Beneath me was the continent. The air bumped uncomfortably several times. Neat and girdled, the stewardess moved in the darkened cabin. Small triangular sandwiches appeared. Coffee in plastic cups. I ate mechanically. I drank mechanically. The in-flight movie would soon begin. I had seen it. I wanted to fall asleep. I prayed I’d fall asleep. Sleep and distance: that was what I needed. A profound sleep, an immeasurable distance. I sat in the inclined chair, sleepless, in the cabined darkness. They started the in-flight movie. I looked at the headphones plugged into the ears of the passengers. They resembled stethoscopes. The passengers were doctors called in on some severe illness. I was alone. I had abandoned everything. I had left it blazing in a token fire. The plane rocked. We were over Colorado. Colorado was not far enough. The plane settled and flew. I half wished it would not stop flying. Traversing continents. Oceans. Poles. I would sit like this, seat half-inclined, oxygen mask there, emergency exit there, the stewardess making her apparitional rounds, the crushed pillow so. They would occasionally flash a signal. I’d fasten my seat-belt. The signal would silently snap out. I’d unfasten my seat-belt. I’d obey the instructions as though the safety precautions mattered. I’d read what magazines there were as though they contained something to be read. Then the magazines would be exhausted. The triangular sandwiches, the olives on a toothpick, the spears of carrot, would give out. The fuel would give out. There would be alternations of light and dark. Below the land would become unrecognizable. Mountainous, snowy. There would be cloud formations of an unknown nature. I would go on to the end of it, with Astrovision. It was a way of dying.