Sublime

In his mind he was the protagonist of every story, the center of everyone’s appalling attention;

He walked past strangers and cataloged their pain.

New York est un endroit extraordinaire, murmura-t-il. Je me demande souvent ce qu’aurait été ma vie si j’étais resté ici au lieu de partir pour Aurora au début de l’été 1975. — Vous n’auriez jamais connu l’amour, dis-je. Il fixa la nuit. — Comment avez-vous compris, Marcus ? — Compris quoi ? Que vous n’aviez pas écrit Les Origines du mal ? Peu aprè

explorers invariably give their names to the places that haunt or kill them.

What might only be a simple point on the workday cycle, a reconvergence of what the day scattered as Sappho said someplace back in some college course, Maxine forgets, becomes a million pedestrian dramas, each one charged with mystery, more intense than high-barometer daylight can ever allow. Everything changes.

hurrying off to some other crucial location.

No sooner have I thought one thing than it evokes another thing, and then another thing, until there is an accumulation of detail so dense that I feel I am going to suffocate. Never before have I been so aware of the rift between thinking and writing.