Marginalia

Note to the Reader: If you find yourself reading this too quickly, please close the window and stare at a wall for ten minutes before returning.

The question asks for no information. It quietly files an application.

The throw spends the stone forever, and the economy of the game is incorruptible.

The sky has overruled the calendar, and the sky files no minutes.

Naming is the one form of possession that takes nothing at all from its object.

Bait is optional; the straight hook still catches what the fishing was for, an afternoon.

A cushion on a sill is the oldest surveillance system in Europe, and the cheapest.

The idle hour was not always for sale. It had to be put on the market, and that took centuries.

The machines were meant to buy us the afternoon; somewhere the receipt was mislaid.

The writing that refuses to age was never quite alive enough to.

The living interrupt. The dead wait on the shelf with infinite patience for you to be ready.

Everything bright and fast in the modern world is competing for the one thing you could simply decide to keep.

Rest asks permission of work. Idleness does not recognize work's authority to grant it.

The browser pays in attention, which the good shop accepts as legal tender.

The reply that waits a day is often wiser than the reply that arrives in a minute.

A bench is an act of municipal generosity disguised as a plank.

The early arrival owns a stretch of time that nobody else has thought to claim.

The first cup answers the body. The second answers something harder to name.

An object without utility may still perform the labor of keeping a room human.

A faithful table is cheaper than therapy and often more accurate.

A visible reader makes the room slightly more habitable.

The city improves once you stop extracting from it.

A sandwich at a keyboard is not lunch. It is administrative sorrow.

The hour improved considerably once it stopped trying to be impressive.