lao

reading the note left on the door for us: the firefly and me

If I were to go on a journey, it should be one that I take in an instant. It should be one that I neither prepare for, nor pay for. In the middle of the afternoon, just after the sun goes over the top, and the light is quiet. The stream still runs under the bridge, and a catbird hops slowly by. Sparrow calls, and then leaves the silence. But there is no train going by, or truck to hop on to. We must start again. There must be a vessel I have made with my own hands. I have found the trees myself and cut them down, milled and cured the wood. The metal is found. The sails are found and sewn. The ropes are woven and tied, and looped and knott

The hardest thing was holding my dead daughter in my arms. The next hardest thing was letting them take her away. The third hardest thing was learning calculus, to see why the world can't help but be beautiful, no matter what happens. The fourth hardest thing was writing it all down. She would have looked like me.

The loud echoing night that's considered by those not bred to it silence The outline of the night is the train the sound of the train by the river at night the river that takes the sound of the train and turns it into water before it sends it along to your ears The train is the outline of the night the crickets fill it in

When I say "laundry chute," it does not bring to your mind the house around it baking under slate in its acres of grass, or the hollow, tinny sound of the descent of clothes. When I say "back staircase," you do not see the old yellow paint on the walls, the ancient rubber treads on the stairs, the huge oaken bureau of such size and complexity and openings that none could have created it, none could have moved it there onto its ledge halfway down the twist of steps. The house must have congealed around it, like continents around their shelves. Volcanic activity and secret drawers.

Japanese, spoken, sounds like water flowing over a bed of little pebbles, smooth pebbles, brought long ago by a glacier before you were here, that\'s for sure. German sounds like the endless tread of feet in the mud, and skinned potatoes poured into a bowl, raw. Hebrew is the sound of pens on paper — quills, scratching the words in, the light from the window to go by. Yes but what does English sound like? It sounds like a child. It sounds like a story — like learning to read myself a story. It sounds like whispers and giggles at night. It sounds like huffing your breath out on a cold morning to see how long your breath l

Audubon said that passenger pigeons could fill the sky — took hours, sometimes, for a single flock to pass, so thick, a hunter could get several with one shot. No more passenger pigeons, just endless clouds passing by. Sometimes I don\'t miss them, the birds, seeing how many things there are that can fill the sky.