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The present age is too little to contain it. He died of dehydration in a cave, beside his wife, who survived. His guru believed in the actual diamond: the spreadsheet sutra. Cut the mineral in thin slices and hold them to the light. He can say “topographical confusions,” despite his Alzheimer's; space no longer makes sense. Before we knew, my mother got lost on the three miles home. To be happy in one's skin, until that skin becomes a foreign country. To be a foreign country until its borders blur and you're Buster Keaton on a mast, climbing up in a storm and, just as you adjust, you're on a giant clock's hand, hanging over Manhattan. “Sometimes an Afghan is just an Afghan,” she said when I asked if he'd served in Afghanistan. Carpet bombing is what our friend felt on the ground in Cambodia. Where figure is ground is destroyed “in a progressive manner.” Synonyms include “saturation,” “obliteration.” The empty pool in the church basement was for baptisms only.

--29 March 2015