“In your text’s mirror, Your mirror’s text.” -C.G. — “We are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which … there is nothing.” Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli Thank you for being here. A rose is a rose. A nose is a nose. A crow is a bird. A turd is a turd. Thank you for being here. That house over there. There’s something behind it. It hints of things we cannot see. Nevertheless, it is there. The house behind a house. Thank you for being here.

I have a theory that humans are walking trees whose roots cradle the soul. Just a theory. Carlson wants me on his show but Tucker is such a phony I turned him flat. …a slow building anguish, ending with a simple mantra… but is it enough to stem our last paragraph from entraping us so? So the leaves… the leaves are you, all of you, and sometimes you can see, or hear, or smell and know some things are going on next to you high up in the tree of your soul.

Sitting alone with friends, for just a minute I believed you would sit with me and we would exchange pleasantries before getting down to brass tacks but then she called you to her. Oh well, maybe next time.

It was supposed to be six minutes. Clocked out at fifteen. — I’ve written about my near death experience from 2011. Now I perform oral surgery on it during January’s Story Lab in Truth or Consequences, NM.