There was a time, not that long ago really, when a lonely and obsessive-compulsive man, unable to sleep, might have spent hours on his hands and knees, raking and grooming the floors of his apartment with his fingers, venturing into corners and hard-to-reach places to gather handfuls of hair, dust, random miniature tumbleweeds, and wispy … Read more
The King was widely regarded as a complete jackass: a foolish man who traded his Kingdom and his wondrous gifts for a chain of muffler shops. The Queen had left him immediately, and was followed in short order by his retinue (for he had, in fact, once had a retinue). A few desperate and greasy … Read more
From somewhere he heard a few hesitant notes from a piano. Perhaps it was coming from the back room, but it sounded even further away than that. It was the sound of a piano stretched to the point where it could possibly not even be a piano you were hearing. It could have … Read more
—Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1953 –Zellar, Basement Window, 2005 Monsieur Centrine was a fierce proponent of impossibility. That’s not to say he was one of these characters who will insist that anything is possible. Quite the contrary, in fact. Mssr. Centrine believed that life, the world, and every aspiration of the human heart represented a thoroughly … Read more
If you’re looking for real life –whatever that is– I’m afraid you’ll have to go somewhere else. This is all in my head. There’s nothing real here. These are merely the words that roll down my fingers in the middle of the night as I wait for the light to come fetch me. Some of … Read more
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, o God, thou wilt not despise. –Psalms, 51-17
How many words do you think you can run through your head in a day? It all depends on how many words you have in you, am I right? Images, though, they’re something else; they represent a bigger, more universal language. All you need to do is look around and keep your eyes open. Yet … Read more
I always wanted to be the gun on the table in the first act. I always wanted to be the mysterious stranger arriving in an unfamiliar town with a sack full of magic corn. I always wanted to be the troll who lived under the bridge and the wise old man on the mountain. I … Read more
For the last week I’ve been mucking around in this little magazine I picked up in a junk shop somewhere. The thing is called Reason, and it’s subtitled “A Monthly Journal Devoted to Psychic Science, Education, Healing, Success and Social Reform.” Come now let us reason, it says on the masthead. The issue I have … Read more
Man is what he believes. –Chekhov, Notebooks Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me. –Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil The worst sort of liar, the most tragic, is the one you know is lying to you, but you believe them anyway, because you so desperately want … Read more