Your Dad Didn't Die, So I Won't

How Beautiful Is Forgetting! What Relief It Would Be For The World To Lose Some Of Its Contents.

Only A Few Months Into Our Marriage," Writes The Grandfather, "we Started Marking Off Areas In The Apartment As 'nothing Places,' In Which One Could Be Assured Of Complete Privacy, We Agreed That We Never Would Look At The Marked-off Zones, That They Would Be Nonexistent Territories In The Apartment In Which One Could Temporarily Cease To Exist.

I Don't Mind If Smiles Come At My Expense, I'm A Small Price To Pay.

In America Right Now, We Use Words Like 'smart' To Talk About Bombs. American Rhetoric Is Grounded In Ideas Of Capital-g Good, Capital-e Evil, And It's Very Clear Who Is On Which Side. But In A Book You Can Do Just The Opposite. You Can Use All Lower-case Words.

And Also, There Are So Many Times When You Need To Make A Quick Escape, But Humans Don't Have Their Own Wings, Or Not Yet, Anyway, So What About A Birdseed Shirt?