Goines On: The last sunflower

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Goines thought he had better not trust his thinking of the previous afternoon. He had seemed to become delirious from pulling weeds in the humid heat for too long that morning. He had even pulled up one of Mrs. Goines’ dahlias and the only sunflower that survived from those a friend had given her.
    But wasn’t all of his thinking a sort of delirium? Thinking about weeds and worms – My God! he said to himself, self-consciously adopting a believer’s phrasing. But what was “delirium,” anyway? A dictionary put it harshly: “an acutely disturbed state of mind...characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence of thought and speech.” But the entry also recognized delirium as “wild excitement or ecstasy” and quoted Thomas Wolfe: “…he would stride about his room in a delirium of joy.”
    Thinking was Goines’ joy, the bountiful torrent of its deliverances, which, in its flow, seemed to him coherent, meaningful, manifesting what life was really about.

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