37: Idea

It seems I have nothing to add, as we ride our bicycles home from the movies. The great ideas have been thought, the great men have died, the great books have been written and parodied. The letters of transit and the good of the world, the falcon and the detective’s code of honor, the unvarnished story of a seaman’s life, brush up against jealousy and greed like— but I’m pretending. Profundity is not the result of imitation and careful editing. Rick Blain, Sam Spade, Captain Gregg are not merely phantasms, memories, strutting in light and shadow, but are like the yellow square of light from the window without a curtain on the second story of a house we pass, like the pine tree on a corner arching under the half moon, scattering clouds.

Thumb tacks