Aphorisms for a Lonely Planet

It is easier to photosynthesize than to say I’m sorry.

What we lack possesses us.

A side of sad gives joy its curious twang.

To go far enough you must first go too far.

Agnostic: one who takes all doubts on faith.

Modesty seduces.

First kiss: what we repent of by stealing a second, then a third . . .

When caught, water snakes pee on their captors. Politicians explain.

Prophet: one who preaches the past using future tense.

Slam a door five hundred times, one tentative turn will open it.

There I go again, ducking the snowball my brother didn’t throw at me forty-two years ago, with a rock that wasn’t hidden inside.

Punch line of a Yiddish joke I’ve forgotten: “Oedipus Schmedipus, so long as the boy loves his mother.”

Attendant at the animal shelter showing me a six-toed cat: “That Hemingway character bred them,” she said. “I think he was a writer or something.”

My problems, I say, my addiction, my childhood baggage, my psycho-somatic illness leaving me curled in the fetal position in a restaurant bathroom sobbing. As if I owned them.