LIST

by Calvin Haul

                        “I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die
                        and I can’t stop them. They leave me—and I love them more.”
                                            —Maurice Sendak


Because the spatial nature of words tends to limit themselves, and knowing full well that you will interpret every word I write with at least two or three of your own, and with a certain sensitivity for how language hates elaboration, and with an intimate understanding of your eccentric attention span; I will, despite an awful dread for numbers, limit myself to the essentials of this forthcoming list—which, after attempting to alphabetize, I realized: some catalogues defy the limit of letters.

1. I failed to pass the credit check. They rented the apartment to someone else. Please disregard the optimism of my last correspondence, as well the forwarding address.
2. Yes, I’ll take the waffle maker.
3. Does that old man still shuffle around the block? Does he still slow by our porch to catch his breath? You remember how he stopped to stand? We agreed that in his slump there was evidence of great grief. We argued about his bombed out view of the world and what, with such heritage, must abuse him. You said it was obvious: a history of loneliness. I said it was obvious: tomorrow.
4. I’m no longer a capitalist. If you must judge me, please do so with respect for the principles of my new faith in non-attachment. Besides the waffle maker, I leave everything to you. Excluding my books. And bookshelves. You may have the rest, which I’m pleased to let go in an effort to achieve a less arrogant state of being.
5. I suppose it’s only fair to evenly divide the cutlery. As well the glassware and china. I also ask that you return my collection of coasters and serviette rings. Some things are mere things. Others are defined by their utility. My path of non-attachment does not require me to let go those things that enable me to build upon my character, like making the napkin presentation of a proper host.
6. Ergo, I’ll take the downstairs flat screen but will only watch PBS while running on—May I have the treadmill?
7. Did you spread Frank’s ashes or is he still on the mantle? Following a good deal of reflection, I now take full responsibility for his late-life depression. Admittedly, he was happy before the accident. I should have noticed that he’d lagged behind. I shouldn’t have crossed the street before he appeared from between the cars. Although I’ve never much cared about how you blame me for being drunk that morning, I was always sensitive about how a dog, with such tact, could find ways to repeatedly accuse me during the last years of his life. I’ve never felt more accountable to anyone. Refusing to eat unless you poured the food? Removing himself whenever I entered the room? Frowning at me with deep distrust? These aren’t the acts of a usual animal.
8. Last night I dreamed that every aspect of my life was covered in metal. I hired a metallurgist to remove it. He told me there was nothing beneath it. I said I was sure that I had a life before it. He assured me that I didn’t.
9. Frank looked for ways to torment me but when I tried to kick him off our bed, it’s me who ended up on the couch. Now he’s ashen in that cedar box among my Great Books.
10. All I wanted was some Sophocles. “May I come for the Oedipus Cycle, please?” You said no. You used your absence as an excuse to prohibit me from entering our home. Gone for the weekend, or a week, or a week of weeks, or did you ever leave? I suggested that I might stop by. You threatened to call the police. Now that my interest in the Theban plays has waned, I wonder: Is Frank still between volumes five and six or did you spread him in the meadow?
11. Why the old man stops to catch his breath in front of our house, why he leans his cane against our fence and paces back and forth with his hands on his hips before moving down the street, is a source of great puzzlement. I never dared approach him for an explanation, which you once pointed out would only create the uncomfortable situation of admitting that I do, in fact, watch him. Although I know he’s seen me, there’s a practicality about pretending: I’d have nothing to say about him if we knew each other.

He wears black and carries a black cane. He does not use the cane because he does not need one. He is pretentious and therefore arrogant. He’s dedicated his life to pushing people away for fear of losing control. He frets about answering to others, a compromising situation that would expose his fundamental weakness: a specific kind of cowardice grown out of a general kind of uncertainty.

I’ve watched this man closely. He does not wear a band but exhibits the telltale signs of marriage. She died of breast cancer. He doesn’t remember their last words but regrets his tone, which he remembers sounding harsh.

He is a source of great puzzlement, this old man. Despite numerous flaws, his face expresses the softness of shame that one can only arrive at through earnest and painful introspection. He disparages his shortcomings of character, which imbues him with an odd integrity. He has lied throughout his life. He has cheated people. He is petty. He is embarrassed.

He carries his cane over his shoulder, which means he is a thinker. His shirt is tucked into his pants. His belt is white. The laces of his shoes are also white. He uses the power of accents to achieve a remarkable understatement about meticulousness.

He raised his sons to fear the intentions of men. Now, With so many unchangeable things done, what else should he dare to do?

This question—but I’ve somehow strayed from the list.

12. Instant coffee instead of espresso. Fruit snacks instead of fruit. Frozen peas instead of fresh asparagus. The dollar menu instead of steak. Fish sticks instead of halibut. Powdered milk and all liquids powder. In form and function, things opposite their ideal.
13. The teenager passed me at the corner. I was in the crosswalk. His bangs, a kind of unstudied shabby chic, flopped to and from either side of his faux Italian face. He wore jeans with blown-out knees and a black tank-top that read, I’LL RIP YOU APART. I said, “Really?” He said, “What?”
14. Do you know how to personalize a ringtone? After recording your voice mail to voice memo, I e-mailed the audio file to myself but can’t figure out how to load it. “You couldn’t be more mistaken,” you say. “You are doing a thing with people that you really need to examine. Instead of asking them what their experience is, you just decide and then speak to that and this makes you sound like an idiot. I’m really concerned with your inability to track time or make simple decisions. Yes, I do recommend that you consider brain-mapping to find out what’s wrong with the way you think and why the thoughts don’t get through.”
15. I didn’t intend to offend by comparing you to Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II. I was merely identifying a dangerous trend in your transorbital lobotomy-like thinking. One that has, in the past, compelled other people to stick ice picks in other people’s eyes.
16. You say we are perfectly compensated for poor behavior. I say the actions of others are our sins. We fought often about things unknown to either of us. We agreed only on the mutually obvious. The incontrovertible. Very little. Nothing, we mutually agreed.
17. I agree that it’s irresponsible but my only option was to put the car in hiding when they threatened to repossess it. No: don’t give them my number. It’s easier for you to take the call than for me to take the call. They’re calling for me, after all. And no again. I can’t get the car registered because it won’t pass emissions so I let the insurance lapse.
18. The flowers in my mind evoke a Joie de vivre during these dark days of summer. I remember our time in Paris—you whooping it up on Boulevard de Clichyout front the Moulin Rouge.Me projectile vomiting in the Montmartre Cemetery. Your drunk forgiveness of my drunkenness.
19. Closer. Years later. You strip-searched me behind a gas station north of LA on the 101. I stared east toward the fecund but bleak avocado foothills of central California. The mid-morning sun mixed with mist from the Pacific.
20. “You were wrong that day,” I’d say, if you hadn’t so often been right.
21. The morning Maurice died, I sat in the shade and cried because the world needed him. And the world needs us, but we’re next. In the late afternoon a cloud descended in the shape of a fat baker. I was sitting in the spot where we tried to teach Frank to fetch. I closed the book and watched us: you cross-legged in the grass with a cup of coffee, me holding both ends of a branch with Frank attached to the center of it; his hind legs outstretched in the preferable heat of our meaningful desert.
22. And me holding both ends of that stick, spinning circles around you with no care but for the circle and my centrifugal movement and you and your stillness. Frank was a puppy and we were idle. I never did teach him how to let go. After the accident, he just quit latching on. You both did—which parallel I was trying to reconcile when I realized it was dark. I made a prayer for Maurice, and all the creatures that must have died with him. Then I prayed for your lovely creatures before walking mine into the moon.
23. The books I’ve read are like the friends we once shared: I have forgotten their details. I remember some of their titles and names, but little of their plots or pretexts.
24. From where, exactly, I write to you, I can only properly imagine. Some pay-by-the-week pagoda in a west end prefecture without a proper address. I sleep on a bonsai-printed air mattress. There’s a leak. I’m lucid in a dreamland of Japanese paper flowers. “Konichiwa,” I sleep talk while reaching for your hand, which recedes to the size of an eye in a constellation. I follow your twinkle to the train platform where I don my kimono to beg, but awake north of LA on the 101. I’ve awakened here to pump fuel before. There is graffiti on the station’s wall but the script is inconstant.
25. The gas station is a tavern. The bar is a morgue. Happy hour is burying time. “Sweet dreams,” I soar above the corpses of serried saints, the skeletal remains of barflies.
26. These periodic hot flashes render me useless. I stare at the ceiling and fixate on my imagination of reality. I commit to intense fasting. I assign myself three eating days per week before gorging myself on port and pickled grouse.
27. It’s a shame we stopped travelling together. We got along so well everywhere but here. Would you like to fly to Spain tomorrow? Majorca is splendid this time of year. Or Portugal?
28. The pyramids?
29. Bali? Brazil?
30. Where the wild things are.
31. Another world shines through my window from all the way across the street. What the hell is over there?
32. I owe $3,500 on the car but the bank has closed the account and will settle for less than blue book from anyone but me. The manager hopes to extract her pound of flesh. Suffice to say I’ve already out-witted her on two occasions and maintain my previous weight. This will be the third. Despite my impending poverty, ongoing unemployment, and circulating residences, I’ve managed to scramble together $2,000. Here’s the plan: You have a friend in California. He’s been storing a car for someone you don’t know (me). He (whomever) told you that the car was for sale with a notarized letter stating that I (me) approve of this person (you) to pay off the loan and assume the title. It’s basically a bill of sale but must be notarized because the car is being stored out of state. I know (I being my present me) that we (us, but not as in the familiar form) are not out of state but it’s an important part of the story, which my further explanation will only complicate an otherwise simple objective. You’ve met him (me) on the state line to have you (you) sign the bill of sale in person. Also an important point because, although the account is closed, the bank will most likely require you to sign an affidavit of some sort or another stating that such was the case. You needn’t worry about any of this because the bank has long since written off the loss. I can’t go in because they’ll insist I give up the vehicle. The bank manager is awaiting your arrival. Please use your maiden name.
33. Does the lie still exist after the liar has corrected the falsehood?
34. When I think about what happens during my daily life, most of it occurs in my head. This does not mean it isn’t happening, but may mean it isn’t happening to you.
35. I no longer need your consolation but in order to continue living require some kind of personal compassion. It’s far more difficult to suffer oneself than the annoyances of others. To live alone is a stupid kind of brave.
36. Inauthenticity. Poetic contrivance. Manipulation and deceit. Are these your only reasons?
37. I’m drawing from the stories of our life to draft a series of greeting cards. The inscriptions are mired in cliché. The most expedient way to convey tenderness to strangers: sentimental hokum. Like awakening naked on Christmas morning. This card’s cover is a bright, blank white. The interior is Chianti red. There is a slat on the left-hand side with (parenthetical) instructions that read: Insert recipient’s naked photo here. A profile illustration of a wise man cuts across the crease of the inside spine. His arms are outstretched. He proffers myrrh. He faces the photo. To the wise man’s right, the following inscription in antique lace: You are Christlike.
38. It’s the lace that makes it, right?
39. He bumped me on accident. I said, “You want to take this onto the lawn and tumble it up like real men?”
40. I did not lose things. I lost the things that things are made of.
41. Now?
42. The wind ratchets down. Branches quiver to stillness. There hangs the precision of a tipped moon. I need a poem.
43. You remember how I like to rearrange my books whenever I’m in a mood? This morning, I burned my tongue so shelved Birthday Letters next to Ariel.
44. A meek friend introduced me to an obdurate man with an insufferable smell. I detest adjectives. A friend introduced me to a man with a stink.
45. Much better, yes?
46. Here: I picked these for you. The stems droop from my scarred hand like the desiccate tentacles of a waterbound beast. I look back and see a garden…

                        But nothing from where I stand
                        on this fallow piece of land
                        where petals prefer
                        the finality of sand.

47. (I still need a poem.)
48. Yes, I admit to traipsing through the neighborhood after dark last weekend. I wouldn’t need to sneak if it wasn’t for your defamatory ridicule. You think they don’t tell me everything you say at the block parties you refuse to attend? That’s why I was wearing a hoodie and that’s why I ran. Besides, Mr. Burby didn’t like me before you didn’t like me. He rolled down his window, turned his neighborhood watch flashlight in my direction, and asked about my intentions. He actually asked, “What are your intentions this evening?” Who speaks like that? Instead of revealing my identity—meaning why I was tramping around like some common thug, meaning why I no longer have a key to my own house, meaning why you refuse to admit me, meaning why I spent the better part of a year in our basement; meaning why Frank, the dog who slept on my throat for the comfort of a heart beat after being weaned too early, died while refusing to eat from my hand—I ran. Darted up the street, into the alley, onto the trash can, over the fence, and into the backyard where I pulled down one of the cedar slats, fell sideways, and nearly impaled myself on the tines of a metal rake that you’d left turned upward in a pile of leaves as if you’d concealed it in order to greet me. How many times have I… Frank barked, the back porch alighted, Mr. Burby phoned the police, the kitchen window opened, and you issued the first of many flying pots. You remember the rest: I serpentined toward you en route to the front gate. You connected twice, hitting me once in the chest and again in the back before I could clear my premises.
49. I am waiting for a bus on the corner of Empire Avenue. The leaves are falling in various shades of red. Clouds are shifting quickly in triplets. The sun comes. Goes.
50. I kneel to pray in a state of utter Bethlehem. My countenance, grisaille as if molded into existence. My mind, a constant rhythm of belief overwhelmed by disbelief. An absence in progress. A negation of oneself.  
51. Anyway, how is my biographer to know where I was when no one knows where I am? I’m not suggesting that this life of mine deserves any great third-party literary acknowledgement, but now that you won’t be there to tell it, I am apprehensive about my history.
52. There appears to be no one for anyone to talk to about me.
53. Please, please, please. The next time someone asks, at least pass along the whereabouts of my inner child—which location you know intimately from the countless times you tried to evict him. 
54. At this altitude, I was forced to add double the amount of baking powder to retain the recipe’s original fluff. Still, the whole wheat was delicious. Thank you for the waffle maker.
55. To depict the ordinary in extraordinary terms: I am a failure.
56. You know how much I care about the order of things. Like the hierarchy of angels. Or the correct arrangement of e-mail recipients in a professional group list. The President, for example, should always be listed before the COO. And the COO should always appear before the Senior VP, unless, of course, the Senior VP is your boss. It’s the simple redaction of importance as expressed by title and relationship. If the e-mail is to your boss but you want to include the President? Send it to your boss and Cc the President. One should never list the President second but it’s perfectly appropriate to list her beneath the primary recipient line.
57. Why in the hell can’t I get a job?
58. Today I discovered a dead box elder bug upturned on a canister of paint. I blew its papier-mâché husk onto the ground before prying the lid open with a screwdriver.
59. After shaving, I primed my chest with an acrylic base and wandered into Graffiti Town looking for delinquents. It didn’t take long for me to find their fire in the alley that services the underworld. The surest among them took his can to me, sprayed me into a miscellany. Now I wander in multiples.
60. Did you remove my box of heirlooms from the puddle in the garage? It contains old photographs of us that I will turn into confetti for your going away party. Plus a few artful images I intend to keep for those Christmas cards—You, a brilliant kind of moonlike naked in each of them.
61. I look at our house whenever I pass. I don’t know why, when there’s so much more to see than us, there, somewhere in the past, love-making on the lawn. Most of what I see is historical. The view is a mere backdrop for phantoms in my head. It appears as if I’m talking to myself but I’m arguing with you.
62. Did you resolve the dilemma with our neighbor? His fence encroaches on our property by four or more inches, and every one of them is litigable. Have you told him I said so? You know I’m not the litigious type but four inches over 130 feet amounts to a bona fide land dispute. With four more inches, we could plant some forthstandable flowers or uncurl the corner of a blanket or let the ivy overtake it or, with the decorous generosity of a good neighbor, let the fence be because what difference does four inches really make in the linear equation of 130 feet?
63. Last night I had memories from a past that does not exist. During a singular moment of deceptive sleep, my dream evoked an intricate history of familiarity. The experiences of my mother, my mother’s mother, and all mothers in my maternal line back to the very first one at the very beginning of all of this, drifted around me as pictures on pieces of scrap paper. The majority of them illustrated short lives of pain. One, however, floated higher among the rest. It conveyed happiness and hope. Old age and enviable wisdom. I pulled that piece toward me to study the intricacies of its interstices but the page was blank. I awoke knowing that to the extent my heritage is true, I am false.
64. You told me to make new friends. I picked up biography, autobiography, historical non-fiction. The stories of strangers are familiar to me. My relationships are more manageable than ever. Although my conversations are pointedly one-sided, I pick and choose them as I go. Carl, for example. Did you know that in 1956, publisher Kurt Wolff suggested that Pantheon Books publish his biography? Aniela Jaffé was appointed biographer but then, in 1957, the decision was made to have Jung author the book. What began as the concept for a biography became the autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. In the prologue, Jung says that what we are and appear to be can only be expressed by myth. This got me to thinking about Maurice and how each of his books illustrate Jung’s point. I felt an urgent need to introduce my two friends but it’s difficult to develop a social circle among people who are dead.
65. Why does signaling provoke drivers in the rear to accelerate?
66. The spinach enchiladas come with mushrooms and pico de gallo and are topped with chile con queso and sautéed vegetables. $2 Margaritas until six p.m. I arrived at noon.
67. Did he just say last call?  
68. Let go once and we risk never touching again.
69. After leaving the athenaeum, I ate a bologna sandwich in the rain. Tomorrow, I will dine on some succulent beast near the medieval church in Old Town.
70. Disregard my instruction in #32. The car was impounded the day before yesterday. Highway Patrol pulled me over for not using my blinker. A minor infraction that the officer would have let go with a warning but my license was expired, I had no proof of insurance, and the car was unregistered. To make matters worse, the cop offered me a ride to the next exit in his K9 Unit. I accepted his kindness without realizing there was a roach in my shirt pocket. The caged Belgian Malinois went berserk when I climbed into the cab. After a lengthy debate over whether or not the dog would act this way to an innocent stranger, the officer hauled me out of the truck, discovered the incriminating evidence, and arrested me on the spot. And to think: I don’t even smoke grass.
71. I meant to tell you this over the phone but you refused the collect call. You can imagine that a collect call from jail is of the utmost importance to my freedom so I don’t understand why you would reject me during such a vulnerable moment. And to tell the operator to tell me to call someone else for a ride, knowing full well that that fruitless exchange would count as my call? I returned to my cell. Dreamed that your body was a series of bars. My prison.
72. Do you remember our last conversation? I asked what it was that finally drove you away. “Your ongoing disrespect for me and everyone else on Earth gives me inarguable justification,” you said. Inarguable still isn’t a word.
73. I was released on my own recognizance earlier today in a downpour with a drunk wearing socks but not shoes. After slopping his way through puddles to the city bus stop, he discovered he had no money for the fare. I was short or would have paid for him. I took my seat. He folded his arms, bowed his head, and became part of the ravaging drizzle.
74. Something about him reminded me of Henri from Haiti, the cabbie we met in Boca Raton.
                   "En Haiti I’s white, but ear dey calls me black. Dare I’s reech but eer I’s poor.
                   So I tink, dare eez no certainty."

He told us about his aunt who was shot through the neck on the streetsof Port-au-Prince. We agreed how silly pink looks on buildings and how much pink is on buildings in Boca Raton, but how much safer pink is than red.

75. Did I ask about Frank’s ashes?
76. Disregard my self-proclamation in #4. Non-attachment bores me. Things distract me from boredom so I want as many as I can gather. In addition to the books, bookshelves, coasters, serviette rings, flat panel and treadmill, please set aside 50% of everything. Yes, that means one of the aquariums. I will schedule a moving truck.
77. Now that we’ve broken our chain of love and suffering, I admit to indulging myself with weekly haircuts throughout our year-long separation. Excluding my daily bar tab, that’s how I spent the residual income. She refused to cut my hair on three occasions because I was drunk, which is to say that I don’t think she ever took advantage of me.
78. She talked about her strays while working my hair between her fingers to cut around my ears. She took great care while tapering my sides. I don’t appreciate the style but desperately enjoyed the process that lead to its conclusion, and our conversation along the way. At last count, she was feeding thirty-two feral felines. She refers to them as “her” cats but of course they aren’t. I had fifty-two cuts last year and sat through twice as many stories. Finn is a three-legged scrapper who chews on grass and prefers the shade to sun. She once watched Armadel blind a collie, whose crying owner carried the bleeding dog away in his arms. She planted Votter in the community garden after discovering her dead on the porch one winter morning. Now she leaves her basement window open. “Cats enter and exit as they please,” she says while running the electric razor up and down my neck. “Yes,” I agree, wishing that a haircut was a thing I could order seconds of… or something I could return as inadequate to have remade.
79. Fifty two haircuts and I’m on track to increase that number by four or five visits during this year of our divorce. I engage her in lengthy conversation about cats to prolong the time she spends fussing over my eyebrows. A group of cats is a clowder. A bezoar is a hairball.
80. After re-reading #64, I fear as though you’ll mistake the description of my social circle as a tacit introduction. Please don’t. Besides, excluding Sendak, I’ve quit all of them. I now only read children’s books.
81. Four irrefutable truths for future teratologists: 1. Monsters prefer division to the whole; 2. Monsters embrace consequence as reward; 3. Monsters are driven by compulsion; 4. Monsters are inconsolable.
82. My monsters abound without you. As they did with you. As they do.
83. My arresting police officer was black. I’ve deliberated about whether or not to say so because I know how sensitive you are to any reference of skin. Color is, admittedly, an inferior descriptive feature in the overall composition of a man so I will try to recount his appearance with greater accuracy. He was broad-shouldered and trim, standing at a height of 5’10. I’m certain of his height because I’m certain of my own height and we looked level into one another’s eyes. He wore a dark blue uniform with a standard-issue black belt and carried a baton, gun, mace, magazine pouch, and handcuffs. His hair, graying at the sides, was white-walled above his ears. There were an unusual number of pocks on his face. I told him about the benefits of your facial sanding.
84. Have you seen the old man? Something compels me to introduce myself before it’s too late, as if the fiction I’ve built up around him is my sole remaining possibility for any genuine exchange. Now that I’ve imagined his every detail, I wonder to what extent he has imagined me. Although I don’t care to know his name, I desperately need him to know mine. Please, if our union ever mattered, you will do me this final favor. Cut and copy the following letter. Place it in his hands.

               Good sir,

               First, my sincere condolences regarding the loss of your wife. I know how much she                meant to you, and I also realize that your final words were harsh. Remember:                although she never forgave you, I know that your self-abuse is traceable to that                original grief. To this extent, you’ve atoned for your wrongdoing. The afterlife also                offers forgiveness.

               There does remain one issue that we must address in the here and now: Why did you                behave like that? Why, exactly? Why?

               You must know that I’ve been watching you all these years. What in the world do you                think you’re doing every day by taking in my air without introducing yourself?                Indeed.  

               Although I’ve made believe you, it’s impossible to make believe any one of my                deductions about your character. Each of them are as well founded as the science of                sight.  

               With this in mind, would you like to reconsider your reticence? Do you care to turn                things around? Your apology may lead to another chance with me—and we both                know that for men such as ourselves, second chances are a rarity.

               My name… but this moves us along too quickly.

               What is yours?

85. Although these manifestations occurred only in his mind and therefore only to him, they were as real to him as things that other people saw.
86. So he estranged himself to everyone, and to their everyones.
87. It’s cold. Snow proves itself against the world’s only remaining window. Your door, locked. The key, changed. How else do you think I would know?
88. Christmas: The proprietor of the shabby chic boutique on Fargo Road will sell me her faux pink tree for $175, fully decorated. I must, however, buy it now. Her theme for the next holiday season is a predominant yellow with burnt orange accents. She needs the space in her storage room to begin the process of design and décor. I’ve a keen interest in acquiring the tree but have nowhere to put it. The upstairs room we envisioned as guest quarters when we had mutual friends—it’s still empty, isn’t it?
89. I’m convinced that because it wasn’t all about you it isn’t all my fault. You know how your eyes ice over when you’re mad. And the airs you adopt repel people. When the glass of your soul frosts over, it’s impossible to see in or out. The term is zero visibility. Or, How you see me now.
90. I will not mention the sun because its domination is all encompassing. What needs be said of light that light does not say for itself?
91. The horizon is a misnomer.
92. You said you were content to stay and watch the yellow leaves fall from our mostly bare aspen but now you say you’re moving? How do you expect me to continue paying the mortgage if I must also pay you? Yes, I know that we’re the last owner-occupied residence on the block. From the condition of his yard, it appears as if even Mr. Burby resigned as neighborhood watch and gave up on the idea of home ownership. I don’t understand why you insist on leaving when you have the entire blight of our neighborhood to yourself.
93. Disregard my sentiment in #76. Yes, I did pick up the furniture you left in the front yard, but I couldn’t bring myself to keep it because faith is a difficult habit to break. Instead, I drove the truck up Needle Mountain to the pass between the canyons where we used to picnic. After breaking the furniture into little pieces, I burned it. The water in the aquarium boiled.
94. A mistake: I thought we’d given ourselves to me.
95. I have been writing. Just lately I completed a piece of flash fiction.
    
                            A taxidermist at the petting zoo
                            On a partly sunny day

      A taxidermist went to the petting zoo on a partly sunny day.

96. My intention was to make a story twice as long as Hemingway’s six word story, which restriction seemed a more difficult task than writing a six word story of my own. You may think that twelve words is no great output but the sentence took me a quire or more to write. In fact, I began with this twelve word story:
    
                            Goodbye
                            Serenade

With so many unchangeable things done, he’s uncertain of what to do.

97. The primary difficulty of language: there’s always a better word. My primary difficulty: I’ve really no idea why words must change.
98. Let me replace the above sentences: The problem with words like “love” is the world of words like “love.”
99. Please circle before you leave.
100. P.S. 

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