This Life Is But The Childhood Of

I Wandered Over Across The Hall Where They Were Showing A Short Movie About Vasectomies. Much Later I Told Her That I'd Actually Gotten A Vasectomy A Long Time Ago, And Somebody Else Must Have Gotten Her Pregnant. I Also Told Her Once That I Had Inoperable Cancer And Would Soon Be Passed Away And Gone, Eternally. But Nothing I Could Think Up, No Matter How Dramatic Or Horrible, Ever Made Her Repent Or Love Me The Way She Had At First, Before She Really Knew Me.

Think Of Being Curled Up And Floating In A Darkness. Even If You Could Think, Even If You Had An Imagination, Would You Ever Imagine Its Opposite, This Miraculous World The Asian Taoists Call The "ten Thousand Things"? And If The Darkness Just Got Darker? And Then You Were Dead? What Would You Care? How Would You Eve Know The Difference?

If You Write Fiction, You're By Yourself. There Are Certain Advantages To That In That You Don't Have To Explain Anything To Anybody. But When You Get In With Others Who Share The Loneliness Of The Whole Enterprise, You're Not Lonely Anymore.

I Knew Every Raindrop By Its Name.

The Traveling Salesmen Fed Me Pills That Made The Lining Of My Veins Feel Scraped Out, My Jaw Ached... I Knew Every Raindrop By Its Name, I Sensed Everything Before It Happened. Like I Knew A Certain Oldsmobile Would Stop Even Before It Slowed, And By The Sweet Voices Of The Family Inside, I Knew We'd Have An Accident In The Rain. I Didn't Care. They Said They'd Take Me All The Way.