So two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings walk into a bar. One turns to the other and says, “Did you remember to check the end state of that simulation we were running?” The other says, “No, I thought that you did?” To which the first replies, “Oh shit , we missed it. I suppose we must do all of this again. Barkeep,
- two beers please." The bartender nods in that way that bartenders do, pours the two beers, expertly, by the way, just so, and hands them to the first hyperintelligent pandimensional being. The second one pulls a few singles out of his wallet, places them on the bar, and the pair turn around and begin walking toward a table in the middle of the mostly-empty bar. The bar- tender picks up the money, fans it out, frowns, and calls to his patrons’ backs: “Hey, this isn’t enough!” The two turn around simultan- eously, with parity, and stare at him. A beat.
+ two beers please." The bartender nods in that way that bartenders do, pours the two beers, expertly, by the way, just so, and hands them to the first hyperintelligent pandimensional being. The second one pulls a few singles out of his wallet, places them on the bar, and the pair turn around and begin walking toward a table in the middle of the mostly-empty bar. The bar- tender picks up the money, fans it out, frowns, and calls to his patrons’ backs: “Hey, this isn’t enough!” The two turn around simultan- eously, with parity, and stare at him. A beat.
One of them, the one without the beer, breaks the silence by exclaiming, “Oh dear god, I’m sorry! I didn’t know your prices went up since last time. What do I owe you?” The bartender says, “Oh, just another dollar -fifty.” The being reaches in his back pocket, slides out his wallet, looks in smiling, and frowns when he sees it’s empty. He looks to the other and says, “You got a buck -fifty I can borrow?”
The second hyperintelligent pandimensional being considers this. He sets the beers down on the table, pulls out his own wallet, opens it, and frowns. “I’m broke too,” he says.
diff --git a/death-zone.html b/death-zone.html
index 4c3587d..314719c 100644
--- a/death-zone.html
+++ b/death-zone.html
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
I didn’t write this sestina yesterday. It’s the first time I fell behind in my task and hopefully, the only time it will. This means that today I must write two sestinas. If I don’t write them today, I will have to write two later down the line.
Although I feel I’m slogging through each line I think I’m doing better every day, though maybe this is wishful thinking: I showed my friend my just-completed task two days ago (my God, was it two entire days? I’ve no idea what I’ll
- do after thirty-nine days . I think I’ll feel like Inigo Montoya , who’d been in the line of revenging for so long, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life), and he deigned to be polite, but I could tell the task was hard for him. He told me finally that I
+ do after thirty-nine days . I think I’ll feel like Inigo Montoya , who’d been in the line of revenging for so long, he didn’t know what to do with the rest of his life), and he deigned to be polite, but I could tell the task was hard for him. He told me finally that I
had made a noble effort, but that ultimately I failed. So my question : when will I be a decent sestina writer? For this is my task. Maybe if I just keep cranking out line after line I’ll finally figure it out. Maybe one more day or another week will do it, or maybe I’ll need two,
or maybe it’ll never happen. Maybe a sestina’s too involved, too much weaving of words too fine, and I will never write a good one, even on my best day, even if I employ all my skill and all my will. I’m not used to writing poems with thirty-nine lines, that must be the problem, must be why this task
is Herculean. He only had to finish twelve tasks, and I have one less one thousand, five hundred twenty-two, and it’s nothing but complaining lines about how hard it is to be a person . I am getting sick of myself with these poems, and will soon be loathe to get out of bed every day.
diff --git a/found-typewriter-poem.html b/found-typewriter-poem.html
index e749edb..ac70f6d 100644
--- a/found-typewriter-poem.html
+++ b/found-typewriter-poem.html
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
-
Is he older ? I asked her. And I never got an answer, because at the moment she disappeared in a puff of smoke. I like to think nothing ever happened to her save that she went over to the spirit realm. I usually know better though.
+
Is he older ? I asked her. And I never got an answer, because at the moment she disappeared in a puff of smoke. I like to think nothing ever happened to her save that she went over to the spirit realm. I usually know better though.
diff --git a/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html b/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
index 3707554..3b1ece5 100644
--- a/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
+++ b/i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
I wanted to tell you something in order to explain the way I feel about the Universe , its workings, etc. But I couldn’t yesterday —I’m sorry—I wanted only to ball myself up and cry all day. It was the sixteenth day in a row this happened to me, and to be
more than two weeks waiting to cry is, especially when, the whole time, I wasn’t able to, absolutely horrible. It was no sweet sixteen, I’ll tell you that much. Unless at yours, the Universe kept telling you to quit having such a ball and that you should have died, like, yesterday.
At first, it feels like you’re winning—that yesterday you really were meant to die, but since you still are , you beat the system somehow. But the Universe bawls, “No, I meant you should’ve crawled into a hole and fucking died !” And then the Universe punches you right in the gut, something like sixteen
- times, and all you can think is, “Some sixteenth birthday! Maybe I will go die in a hole.” Yesterday, at times like this, is a luxury the cruel Universe refuses to give you. This is when it’s a pain just to be , when that Marvell line about “rolling our stuff into one ball ” just seems glib, when you don’t want one body, let alone two.
+ times, and all you can think is, “Some sixteenth birthday! Maybe I will go die in a hole.” Yesterday, at times like this, is a luxury the cruel Universe refuses to give you. This is when it’s a pain just to be , when that Marvell line about “rolling our stuff into one ball ” just seems glib, when you don’t want one body, let alone two.
Something else that may come as a surprise to you: over the past more-than-a-fortnight, these sixteen days, I’ve had nothing to eat but crackers and a cheese ball. (That’s not entirely true—yesterday I had some candy, peppermints and Jujubes.) Maybe this is why I’m so mad at the Universe—
because all it has ever wanted, this Universe that gave me life, fed me from its breast til I was two, and even before that, made a place in which I could be— all it’s wanted was for me to take the sixteen steps to sobriety, fold the Eight-Fold Path over yesterday and step around it lightly, as I would an exercise ball,
but the problem is, dear Universe, there’s no way I could be something as hard as all that, to wake up yesterday morning, stretch over my sixteen selves, bound out like a ball.
diff --git a/ipsumlorem.html b/ipsumlorem.html
index ed91035..9ce0e5f 100644
--- a/ipsumlorem.html
+++ b/ipsumlorem.html
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
Cicero
diff --git a/january.html b/january.html
index 6a959cb..08a3694 100644
--- a/january.html
+++ b/january.html
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
January. It’s cold, and I don’t like it. I prefer warm weather, although I like sweaters. They are the one warm spot in an otherwise shitty season. But fall is better sweater weather. So be patient,
patient , while waiting for the end of January. A change of season brings a change of mood along with it, although I never thought I’d be one to believe that SAD junk about effects of weather—
weather!— on a person. Who becomes a patient just because of onemonth of snow ? I did say of January: “It’s cold, and I don’t like it,” but I hardly think it’s fair, knocking whole seasons,
- seasoning your conversation with demands for better weather. (While I find it nearly impossible, it’s my mission to be patient while waiting for the end of January.) Oh, but how the long nights do so tax one!
+ seasoning your conversation with demands for better weather. (While I find it nearly impossible, it’s my mission to be patient while waiting for the end of January.) Oh, but how the long nights do so tax one!
Onewarm spot in an otherwise shitty season— all I ask, January, is one warm day. Do you care whether I’m a person who becomes a patient in some psych ward? This just about does it.
I.T., although I never thought I’d call one, is fair and patient when I call. They talk with me, season my conversation of demands for better weather with an argument for the white beauty of January.
They know it’s hard; they say each season has its detractors. One day , they say, the weather will be controlled—until then, patience in January .
diff --git a/lappel-du-vide.html b/lappel-du-vide.html
index c14f959..5070589 100644
--- a/lappel-du-vide.html
+++ b/lappel-du-vide.html
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
Thomas Wolfe
diff --git a/largest-asteroid.html b/largest-asteroid.html
index b83a651..480cf82 100644
--- a/largest-asteroid.html
+++ b/largest-asteroid.html
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
- What secrets does it hold? Can it tell us who kissed Sara that night on the veranda, or who Joey is really in love with? We all know it isn’t Sara, we mean look at them Christmas eve and he’s staring whistfully at the stars, or the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt. She’s staring at him, sure, but she sees the twinkle in his eye is not aimed in her direction. The reflection of that reflection will beam into space, lightyears of space, dimming slowly each second, until it dies out like all of Sara’s hopes for something resembling love in this life, real love that takes hold of her by the throat and refuses to let go, love that makes men travel for her and only for her, love that launches space ships to that asteroid, the largest in the asteroid belt, that jewel of dead rock and ice, harboring something that could’ve been lifeand nothing that actually is .
+ What secrets does it hold? Can it tell us who kissed Sara that night on the veranda, or who Joey is really in love with? We all know it isn’t Sara, we mean look at them Christmas eve and he’s staring whistfully at the stars, or the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt. She’s staring at him, sure, but she sees the twinkle in his eye is not aimed in her direction. The reflection of that reflection will beam into space, lightyears of space, dimming slowly each second, until it dies out like all of Sara’s hopes for something resembling love in this life, real love that takes hold of her by the throat and refuses to let go, love that makes men travel for her and only for her, love that launches space ships to that asteroid, the largest in the asteroid belt, that jewel of dead rock and ice, harboring something that could’ve been lifeand nothing that actually is .
diff --git a/last-bastion.html b/last-bastion.html
index 1ed40d9..d1e8d9e 100644
--- a/last-bastion.html
+++ b/last-bastion.html
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
- Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle down the cold and darkened highways of the heart. They are the last personality left. They are the meek who inherited the heart , what was left of it. Without food to cook in new or exciting ways nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs of the heart quietly waste away while staring doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows checking under the dusty produce shelves for something they pray the rats haven’t found yet.
+ Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle down the cold and darkened highways of the heart. They are the last personality left. They are the meek who inherited the heart , what was left of it. Without food to cook in new or exciting ways nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs of the heart quietly waste away while staring doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows checking under the dusty produce shelves for something they pray the rats haven’t found yet.
Years ago, the economy of the heart boomed and there was food everywhere. Produce piled high in pyramids of devotion, meat in gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence, dairy which ran like the mythical river toward cereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumming like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun near a river where reeds sang in the wind the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.
No one knows when it all ended. No one can say if it was the heart that dried up or the heart’s supply. Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer. People began dying, not of starvation but of a certain facial expression that could only be described as desperation. Now all that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastion of a once mighty empire of the heart are reduced to husks blown dry by wind.
diff --git a/loremipsum.html b/loremipsum.html
index 8848b41..9d24ab6 100644
--- a/loremipsum.html
+++ b/loremipsum.html
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
Cicero
diff --git a/love-as-god.html b/love-as-god.html
index b6d5d0d..41b2344 100644
--- a/love-as-god.html
+++ b/love-as-god.html
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
God is love , they say, but there is no god. Therefore, how can there be love? And if there is no love, how can there be God? There are things in life, I suppose, that are simply unanswerable mysteries of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.
Maybe there are many loves, instead of one. The difference between what isn’t and what is could merely be one of scope. The mystery is how we speak only of one love— to act as though we know we are supposed to love only one other, or that one other and God.
- But supposing that one other is God? What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone, supported by God only when He feels He is supposed to support her? What kind of love is this? I would argue in fact this isn’t love, this one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand mystery.
+ But supposing that one other is God? What then? Is the God-lover to walk alone, supported by God only when He feels He is supposed to support her? What kind of love is this? I would argue in fact this isn’t love, this one-set-of-footprints-in-the-sand mystery.
How to define two loves as one is the mystery. It’s obvious to many there is a thing called God, and just as obvious that there is one called love. Maybe we fool ourselves, we who can’t be alone; maybe we don’t know what either God or love is. Maybe, and perhaps; but I for one propose
that we as only humans are not supposed to know or understand capital-L Life, that mystery. Isn’t it enough to know that God is love, and love is God, no matter which one does or does not exist? What is life, if no love,
if no God? Maybe this saying, “God is love,” is less a definition of God what what love is supposed to be. Of these two terms, maybe2 the one we should capitalize is Love, that great mystery of chemistry and longing. Maybe “Love is god” is a more fitting epigraph for what life is
diff --git a/man.html b/man.html
index 856f8f2..3be4228 100644
--- a/man.html
+++ b/man.html
@@ -30,14 +30,14 @@
- THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES
+ THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES
THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES
Paul read this on an old mugshot in the library. He had taken the bus into town to check out a few books on woodworking and got distracted by the True Crime section. He found this mugshot in a book titled Crooks like Us that was published in Sydney. He liked how cities were named after women, or how women were named after cities, whichever was true.
The man in the picture’s eyes were tightly shut, as though he’d just come into the brightness of day after being dark inside for a long time. His head was tilted up and slightly to the right. He was wearing a short light tie with hash marks, and a pinstripe suit. Paul wished the photograph was in color. He was standing in front of a plain brown wall covered in fabric.
The man’s eyes were not so tightly shut as Paul first thought. His eyebrows lifted away from the eyes, giving the man a bemused look. His mouth was slightly opened in what seemed to Paul like a grin. This was accentuated by the man’s ears, which were large. Paul wasn’t sure why the ears made the man look happier. He wondered what crime he had committed.
- Above the man’s head was written T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A . THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES was written over his suit, directly below his ribcage.
+ Above the man’s head was written T. BEDE.22.11.28 / 203 A . THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES was written over his suit, directly below his ribcage.
diff --git a/no-nothing.html b/no-nothing.html
index 53f29ad..1f91e98 100644
--- a/no-nothing.html
+++ b/no-nothing.html
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
- While swimming in the river I saw underneath it a river of stars. Only there was no river: it was noon. You can say the sun is a river ; you can argue the stars back it like shirts behind a closet door; you can say the earth holds us up with its weight or that it means well or it means anything. There is no closet, nor door ; there are no shirts hanging anywhere. There is no false wall that leads deep into the earth’s bowels, growing warmer with each step. Warmth as a con- cept has ceased to make any sense. In contraposition to cold, it might, but cold as well stepped out last night and hasn’t returned. Last I heard, it went out swimming and might’ve drowned . Trees were the pallbearers at the funeral, the train was long and wailful, there was muchwailing and gnashing of all teeth–though there were no teeth, no train, no funeral or prayer or trees at all– nor a river underneath any- thing. There was nothing to be underneath anymore. Look around, and tell me you see something. Look around, and tell me something that I do not know. I know, more than anything, that the world is always ending. Behind that, there is nothing, save that there is no nothing either.
+ While swimming in the river I saw underneath it a river of stars. Only there was no river: it was noon. You can say the sun is a river ; you can argue the stars back it like shirts behind a closet door; you can say the earth holds us up with its weight or that it means well or it means anything. There is no closet, nor door ; there are no shirts hanging anywhere. There is no false wall that leads deep into the earth’s bowels, growing warmer with each step. Warmth as a con- cept has ceased to make any sense. In contraposition to cold, it might, but cold as well stepped out last night and hasn’t returned. Last I heard, it went out swimming and might’ve drowned . Trees were the pallbearers at the funeral, the train was long and wailful, there was muchwailing and gnashing of all teeth–though there were no teeth, no train, no funeral or prayer or trees at all– nor a river underneath any- thing. There was nothing to be underneath anymore. Look around, and tell me you see something. Look around, and tell me something that I do not know. I know, more than anything, that the world is always ending. Behind that, there is nothing, save that there is no nothing either.
Nothing somehow still turns and flows past us, past all time and beyond it, a river returning, to its forgotten origins deep within itself.
diff --git a/ouroboros_memory.html b/ouroboros_memory.html
index 1e6ad90..3cd4d95 100644
--- a/ouroboros_memory.html
+++ b/ouroboros_memory.html
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
Jonathan Safran Foer
diff --git a/plant.html b/plant.html
index 83b2355..26de9e9 100644
--- a/plant.html
+++ b/plant.html
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
I need a plant. I need a thing to take care of. I need a little green brownspottedblackdirt growing quietness. I need a sunlit dawn knowing my name filtered through a thin green window . I need chlorophyll working its magic on beams of grassmade early morning dewdrop sweetmaking green. I need the dark earth sucking water from a black crevice its black magic churning wormilled rockturned starblind darkness and cold intothe opposite of dust . I need the heat to blind me. I need the dumb making to charge my coldened blood. I need the dropturned leaves to turn again their faces to the windblown sun . I need millions of tiny years summed up and burning out some unknown new growth into the air. I need four hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded branches hoisting themselves to the sky. I need ten strong men to fail to bring you down. Old one I need the peace that comes with knowing something sacred holds still in the world. I need your green tonguesof flame to lick at old wounds stitching us together away from ourselves. I need your brownbranching grasp to keep me from drifting off into unknowing terrible sleep . I needto know the snake hanging from your branches. I need to watch the dropping of flesh massful onto the ground from a height. I need the gnawer at your root to strike a vein to quicken old brown stone to movement. I need jeweleyed venom barking new greennesses into the bark. I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden in the dark bark hiding a smallstone smoldering pearl in the knot. I need that pearl held out in a hand like an offering. I need the hand to be a plant’s hand.
- I need a plant. I need a growing growler groaning toward heat and air. I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong holding up the weight of a plain of fallow greennesses of creases and caresses of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur. I need a singer of life crying forward into old roads covered over by dead trees. I need the rasping of root in dirt. I need the unfurling of fiddleheads to sing forth a new symphony. I need fruits swelling large for the harvest. I need yellow light shining through white bark. I need juicecrush flowing waterlike through valleys percolating up through the ground. I need springs bubbling sap into cabins of wood fought for by labor. I need snow on the ground with shoots dotting the melting patches. I need two leaves on a thin stalk shivering in moonlight . I need robinsong warbling over the heads of small seeds sprouting to enliven their growth. I need rings of woody material widening to push the ground out of their way. I need new greennesses pushing out from the brown dark bark gnarled. I need the robin to build its songfilled nest in a branchcrotch . I need the fecundity of fungi on the branches. I need quiet of the sunlight shooting through thousands of branched leaves quivering. I need whisper at dawn. I need burrows underground foxholes. I need duff layers eaten through by worms. I need brooks murmuring through crooks of roots. I need smallfish swimming in their schools at midnight. I need oldnesses giving wayto youngnesses giving way to oldnesses . I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark. I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot. I need snowquiet deadbranch mourning. I need those purple mountains majesty . I need a walk between trees in the dark. I need that moment when stopping to rest it suddenly seems that all the wearyforestroads in all their meandering cometo rest their heads at my astonished feet, none of them needing more than me.
+ I need a plant. I need a growing growler groaning toward heat and air. I need a green thin stem surprisingly strong holding up the weight of a plain of fallow greennesses of creases and caresses of tiny worldmaking hardworking grandeur. I need a singer of life crying forward into old roads covered over by dead trees. I need the rasping of root in dirt. I need the unfurling of fiddleheads to sing forth a new symphony. I need fruits swelling large for the harvest. I need yellow light shining through white bark. I need juicecrush flowing waterlike through valleys percolating up through the ground. I need springs bubbling sap into cabins of wood fought for by labor. I need snow on the ground with shoots dotting the melting patches. I need two leaves on a thin stalk shivering in moonlight . I need robinsong warbling over the heads of small seeds sprouting to enliven their growth. I need rings of woody material widening to push the ground out of their way. I need new greennesses pushing out from the brown dark bark gnarled. I need the robin to build its songfilled nest in a branchcrotch . I need the fecundity of fungi on the branches. I need quiet of the sunlight shooting through thousands of branched leaves quivering. I need whisper at dawn. I need burrows underground foxholes. I need duff layers eaten through by worms. I need brooks murmuring through crooks of roots. I need smallfish swimming in their schools at midnight. I need oldnesses giving wayto youngnesses giving way to oldnesses . I need dapplegray yellowshot ashbark. I need the crunch of dead leaves underfoot. I need snowquiet deadbranch mourning. I need those purple mountains majesty . I need a walk between trees in the dark. I need that moment when stopping to rest it suddenly seems that all the wearyforestroads in all their meandering cometo rest their heads at my astonished feet, none of them needing more than me.
diff --git a/proverbs.html b/proverbs.html
index 456c38a..93e920a 100644
--- a/proverbs.html
+++ b/proverbs.html
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@
diff --git a/shed.html b/shed.html
index ce1a972..b2a73bd 100644
--- a/shed.html
+++ b/shed.html
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
“What do you do all day in that shed out back” his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV. “Write” he answered. “Write what” she asked in that way that means he’d better not say I don’t know. “I don’t know” he said.
- “Goddammit Paul” his mother said. “You’re wasting your life out in that shed. You need to go out and get—” “I chop down trees too” he said. “I make furniture out of them.” His mother’s face did a Hitchcock zoom as she considered this new information. “Is it any good” she asked, eyes narrowed.
+ “Goddammit Paul” his mother said. “You’re wasting your life out in that shed. You need to go out and get—” “I chop down trees too” he said. “I make furniture out of them.” His mother’s face did a Hitchcock zoom as she considered this new information. “Is it any good” she asked, eyes narrowed.
“It’s getting there” he answered. “I’m getting better every day.” “When is it going to be there” she asked. “When are you going to sell this furniture of yours?” “It’ll be a while” he answered.
“Then you’d better get a job until then” she said.
diff --git a/toothpaste.html b/toothpaste.html
index a940475..0f3b43d 100644
--- a/toothpaste.html
+++ b/toothpaste.html
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
- He couldn’t find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
+ He couldn’t find a shirt to go to work in. They all had stains on them somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from that peach he ate two weeks before. Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.
When he took the bus into work he couldn’t relax. He was paranoid everyone was staring at his stain and kept looking out the corners of his eyes to make sure they weren’t. They didn’t seem to be but they could also be looking away just as he looked at them. “The Observation Paradox” he muttered to himself.
Jill was the only one to notice the stain at work. She came around to his cubicle during a break because he dared not show his stain in the break room. “You have a stain on your shoulder” she said “it looks like toothpaste.” “Do I” he feigned ignorance but went red at the same time “I didn’t see that there this morning.” “How do you get toothpaste on your shoulder?” “I don’t know skills I guess” he said and she grinned. “You know vinegar will take that out” she said “although I think I like it. You should start a museum of shirt stains!” “I don’t have that many shirts with stains” he said frowning. “Yes you do” she said.
diff --git a/wallpaper.html b/wallpaper.html
index 906f453..ea0c54c 100644
--- a/wallpaper.html
+++ b/wallpaper.html
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
He didn’t go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there, and his axe. He didn’t want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain medication made him loopy. He couldn’t think as well as he was used to, which wasn’t well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as though they were on the TV in the next room . Someone was cheering. They had just won a car.
His mother came in with lunch on a tray. It was hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. “What have you been doing all day” she asked “you haven’t just been staring at the wall have you?” He had been staring at the wall most of the day. The wall without the window on it, with the woodgrain wallpaper. “No” he said. “What have you been doing then” she asked setting the tray down on his lap. He sat up and almost upset it, but she caught it before it spilled anything. “Composing in my head” he lied. “A novel of my experience.”
- “Do you really think anyone will want to read about you ” she asked and walked out of the room.
+ “Do you really think anyone will want to read about you ” she asked and walked out of the room.
diff --git a/when-im-sorry-i.html b/when-im-sorry-i.html
index 11e1499..984be2f 100644
--- a/when-im-sorry-i.html
+++ b/when-im-sorry-i.html
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
Your casserole dish takes the longest: it has some baked-in crust from when you cooked chicken last night. Washing it allows me to think about this poem’s title and the first few lines. Now that I’ve written them down, I’ve forgotten the rest .
While scraping at something with my finger- nail, I catch myself wondering again whether you’ll thank me for washing your dishes. I realize that this would defeat the point of my gesture, that this has destroyed all good thoughts I’ve had about saying
- “I’m sorry.” This, this is the reason why I am always apologizing: because I never mean it, because there is always, in some attic , a thought roaming that says, insists: “I’ve done nothing wrong, and I deserve all I can take, and more than that.”
+ “I’m sorry.” This, this is the reason why I am always apologizing: because I never mean it, because there is always, in some attic , a thought roaming that says, insists: “I’ve done nothing wrong, and I deserve all I can take, and more than that.”
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- He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from The View from Saturday , which he’d read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word “posh,” and most of all his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he’d just bought.
+ He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from The View from Saturday , which he’d read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the heart puzzle they completed, the origin of the word “posh,” and most of all his fourth-grade teacher Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember) Samovar. He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he’d just bought.
He dipped his pen in the inkwell, screwed the converter piston up, and watched as nothing entered the chamber. He screwed it back down and up again, while dipping the nib more deeply into the ink well. He watched as again nothing filled the capsule. He screwed it down a third time. His thumb knocked the inkwell over somehow by accident.
As he swore , stood up and away from the table, and went into the house proper for paper towels, he resolved to buy a typewriter.
--
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