Folklore

You shouldn’t have a heart attack in your 20s. 47 is the perfect time for a heart attack. Feeding stray shadows only attracts more shadows. Starve a fever, shatter a glass house. People often mistake thirst for hunger so first take a big slurp. A motorboat is wasted on me even though all summer the pool was, I didn’t get in it once. Not in it, not in it twice. A dollhouse certainly isn’t wasted on a mouse both in terms of habitation and rhyme. Always leave yourself time to get lost. 50 cattle are enough for a decent dowry but sometimes a larger gesture is called for like shouting across the Grand Canyon. Get used to nothing answering back. Always remember the great effects of the Tang poets, the meagerness of their wine, meagerness of writing supplies. Go ahead, drown in the moon’s puddle. Contusions are to be expected and a long wait in ICU under the muted TVs advertising miracle knives and spot removers. How wonderful to be made entirely of hammered steel! No one knows why Lee chose to divert his troops to Gettysburg but all agree it was the turning point of the Civil War. Your turining point may be lying crying on the floor. Get up! The perfect age for being buried alive in sand is 8 but jumping up 33, alluding to the resurrection, a powerful motif in Western art but then go look at the soup cans and crumpled fenders in the modern wing: what a relief. Nearly 80% of the denizens of the deep can produce their own light but up here, we make our own darkness.