Life is a messy and inarticulate run towards the inevitable. Art was invented to defy this reality and give it other names. 

So were laundromats. 

Lincoln was in loss prevention. 

Mid summer, a handful of the leaves turn bright red. This is a harbinger of autumn, the sign that summer is half gone, past its prime, the solstice already spent.

An egg comes from a chicken, the cotton in my shorts comes from a plant, and the leather of my shoes come from a cow, which is sad but at least understandable.

Whatever was lying at the bottom of that quarry, Caroline thought – bones, bullets, the remnants of happy and unhappy lives – they were sleeping now, washed in a kind of quiet that only the dead know.

A city where the sweet dank smell of tobacco no longer hangs in the air, where the sound of a mill whistle would be alarming, instead of the welcome signal to the end of a long, sweat soaked work day.

... .And the babies and children, if they wake too,  sit next to their parents on the stoop, because it’s too hot to sit on someone’s lap, and they watch the moon or listen to the slip and whisper of their parents’ voices.

So many things seem impossible, until you've done them. 

Did you know scientists have discovered fossils of magnolia blossoms that back 50 million years? What you are looking at in this picture here, what you have cupped in your own hands, what you have pressed your nose down into so that its petals enveloped your face, is actually a dinosaur.

...He made his way to the roof. There, two Adirondack chairs and a low, oblong box of sand made up a sad, bleached-out sort of zen garden.

... if it weren’t for their backpacks pinning them to the earth, they’d float off with the spores, plant themselves somewhere, grow into something wild.

The truck rumbles alive beneath me, an earthy, alive sound, a roaring like something that lives in a cave come to life.