I Am A Cigarette With A Body

Life And Death Matters, Yes. And The Question Of How To Behave In This World, How To Go In The Face Of Everything. Time Is Short And The Water Is Rising.

If We're Lucky, Writer And Reader Alike, We'll Finish The Last Line Or Two Of A Short Story And Then Just Sit For A Minute, Quietly. Ideally, We'll Ponder What We've Just Written Or Read; Maybe Our Hearts Or Intellects Will Have Been Moved Off The Peg Just A Little From Where They Were Before. Our Body Temperature Will Have Gone Up, Or Down, By A Degree. Then, Breathing Evenly And Steadily Once More, We'll Collect Ourselves, Writers And Readers Alike, Get Up, "created Of Warm Blood And Nerves" As A Chekhov Character Puts It, And Go On To The Next Thing: Life. Always Life.

I Think A Little Menace Is Fine To Have In A Story. For One Thing, It's Good For The Circulation.

I Am A Cigarette With A Body Attached To It

Remember Haydn's 104 Symphonies. Not All Of Them Were Great. But There Were 104 Of Them.