There’s no use crying.

He spilled milk once, just once, but he never forgot it. Maybe it was because of saying—what was that saying?—about spilled milk, or maybe because he would never be sure if he tipped over that glass on purpose. Either way, the damage was done. He had slipped on the milk, slid on the spill, and snapped his spinal cord like a raw guitar string. From the confines of his wheelchair, his head bolted upright, he eyed milk carefully while someone else poured. And they always would.

Henry Killbride (excerpt 1)

Once, I wrote something that could be called a part of a novel. It’s been dead for a while. It’s not publishable. But I liked it. I grew close to it. I slept with it like a security blanket, editing and writing and caressing the beginnings and ends late at night. I might as well excerpt some of it. The not-bad parts. Like the good parts, but not quite.

____________

Genius doesn’t occur often anymore. The more mankind tickles the threads of time and space, the less freak ripples of the bizarre come to surface.  Henry Killbride was certainly the last of the bizarre.

The book was called Wooden Circus. Henry Killbride didn’t know this yet. He sat in a folding chair next to his desk in his studio apartment in Poughkeepsie, idly drawing pictures of light bulbs that were reminiscent of women’s breasts. It was his thirtieth birthday.  Poughkeepsie was the closest city outside New York that he could afford to live in.  It was just two hours away by train.  Outside, a black and blue storm was stirring the winds that made the trees flop awkwardly beside his window.  His hand was covered in smudged ink and he cursed the gods that he, like roughly twelve percent of the population, was born left handed.  Lewis Carroll was a natural lefty, but Lewis Carroll was also a natural pedophile.

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

–David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

They’re Made Out Of Meat

They’re Made Out Of Meat

by Terry Bisson

“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars.”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
“That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they’re made out of meat.”
“Maybe they’re like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?”

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
by Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either – must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

I am trying to “feel” November, yours and mine.

“I am trying to ‘feel’ November, yours and mine. I’ll make an imaginary diorama, like something from grade school, an attempt to win a secret science fair of the heart.”

–Jonathan Lethem, “Lostronaut“

Oh, Jonathan Lethem. When are you going to grow up and write something perfect already? Your literary immaturity discourages the lowly, unpublished masses yearning for an agent. Once again, you’ve squandered your talent on a half-assed story that barely makes any effort to scrape at success. The beginning is brilliant, sure, but you lose control, and the story quickly spins out of your grasp like a severed foot floating into the ether. So I am only going to post the beginning, the extension of this quote. And if anyone wants more of “Lostronaut“, feel free to click through. It’s not really worth it. But it should be. Get it, JL?

Evaporation

“I’ll get you more beer,” she murmured as she kissed him on his sweaty forehead, the screen door slammed shut, and she never came back. He waited for hours. At first it wasn’t so bad: he watched a baseball game and then he took a nap. When he awoke from his apricot dreams, the streetlights had come on, the heat had broken, and the hum of the crickets had pressed in through the screen doors. There might still be a few cold bottles in the fridge. But she wasn’t coming back.

The Immortal Fly Is Tired

The Immortal Fly Is Tired
By Dave Eggers

There is a housefly named Matthias, and he will never die. Most flies live a few days, but Matthias has been granted immortality, and for quite a long time he felt good about this, the fact that he was immortal, but lately he’s not quite as enthused. He has, he supposes, seen too many friends die, and his heart is heavy. He had long known of that notion, of having a heavy heart, but he could not relate to it until now, when his heart is just that: heavy. His heart is so heavy that he feels, when he’s flying, like he’s carrying a piano or an anvil. He’s been immortal now for about 16 years, and in that time, he guesses, has known perhaps 1,250 fellow flies, all of them now gone. Francisco, Davia, Gunther, Marco: all gone.

Over the years, to be sure, the pace has slowed. Having lost 600 or so fly friends in the first three or so years, he had to spend more time alone, to spread out his acquaintances a bit – he simply couldn’t sustain the death-a-day rate he’d been enduring. Cindy, Jasper, Anna, Khushbu: all gone. But did they, his here-today, gone-tomorrow companions, know that he was immortal? Never. Most flies don’t even know they’re going to die; they have no such foresight. They spend the day or days of their lives flying, landing on things, exploring whatever glass surfaces they can find – the feeling of antenna on glass is, oh! oh! beyond description! – and finally, they find a good windowsill or glass of orange juice, and they simply turn over and give up. And for 16 years Matthias has watched this 1,000 or so times, passing through shock and revulsion and empathy, and now he finds himself tired. He is tired of life, of death, of seeing and knowing and breathing. This is why he will, at his next opportunity, fly into your mouth or nostril, this being the only way an immortal fly can end his life. Please welcome him, forgive him, help him to the next world. Do not cough or chew.