now that it’s all over I can start again as I wanted to when I was staring into the corner as stars were what I meant is now that I’m over you can start rather than what oh let’s start again I wanted to begin on an impressive foot but now that it’s broken oh you’ll get it honest it all becomes more or less clear anyway the moon is up only for so long each night which we take as our stingy clue and chummy pattern for plans of social avoidance but don’t be fooled by those elastic manifestos

the rules she’s referring to are more taunts than blockades however past the layers of stone a kind of pool where waves never were it may take lifetimes hacking through jungle and rafting roughly downstream but once you catch a glimpse you walk with your feet from then on but I’m getting ahead of myself this will all be addressed in the next volume so for now perhaps the details of my early life oh yes that will be on the back cover unless I make up something more tragic in hopes of selling more books well I won’t stay

anything if you don’t so let’s get back before we lose what the authorities have requested we keep on ourselves at all times so one of the knots we will be asked to untie since the knife has rusted so badly and our hands are weak this morning but maybe our teeth might you won’t mind will you it’s not like it’s birthday cake or better only discarded ligaments from some forgotten sacrifice that we’ve been meaning to conspicuously bury but there’s not much of a yard here only a platform on which bricks are arranged for a modest future

path one way leads to the water the other to a busy street if you want to walk towards the sound turn to page 53 or keep reading if you want to smell the oil and exhaust of the busy road you know how this works right I won’t always be here to guide you but we try our best and throw the dice or bones or whatever tool for divination is handy though the wind has started and we should hurry indoors any one of these limbs could come down on us with much less warning than you'd expect

varies dramatically among brands. I debated with myself about this all through lunch and eventually decided to go in and see what they have, though I’ve done this experiment in the past and the result is that I buy something I quickly regret. But when I got to the door there was a barely legible note scrawled on a scrap of crumpled paper saying that they would be back in 30 minutes. I figured that was that. So then we went across the street to the bakery. I thought we could bring a variety of cheesecake slices instead of cookies.