For Me, The Short Story Is Not

But The Body Fails Us And The Mirror Knows, And We No Longer Insist That The Gray Hush Be Carried Off Its Surface By The Cloth, For We Have Run To Fat, And Wrinkles Encircle The Eyes And Notch The Neck Where The Skin Wattles, And The Flesh Of The Arms Hangs Loose Like An Overlarge Sleeve, Veins Thicken Like Ropes And Empurple The Body As Though They Had Been Drawn There By A Pen, Freckles Darken, Liver Spots Appear, The Hairah, The Hair Is Exhausted And Gray And Lusterless, In Weary Rolls Like Cornered Lint.

We Converse As We Live By Repeating, By Combining And Recombining A Few Elements Over And Over Again Just As Nature Does When Of Elementary Particles It Builds A World.

As Rilke Observed, Love Requires A Progressive Shortening Of The Senses: I Can See You For Miles; I Can Hear You For Blocks, I Can Smell You, Maybe, For A Few Feet, But I Can Only Touch On Contact, Taste As I Devour

We Must Take Our Sentences Seriously, Which Means We Must Understand Them Philosophically, And The Odd Thing Is That The Few Who Do, Who Take Them With Utter Sober Seriousness, The Utter Sober Seriousness Of Right-wing Parsons And Political Saviors, The Owners Of Pomeranians, Are The Liars Who Want To Be Believed, The Novelists And Poets, Who Know That The Creatures They Imagine Have No Other Being Than The Sounding Syllables Which The Reader Will Speak Into His Own Weary And Distracted Head. There Are No Magic Words. To Say The Words Is Magical Enough.

Blue Is Therefore Most Suitable As The Color Of Interior Life.