So far today it’s been the usual – derailments, riots, floods, domestic murders – and now the gods of death and destruction are clustered around the microwave in the break room, smirking at something one of them, the really fat one, has just said.
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In 1911 Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts, attempted to photograph the soul leaving the body. But, after a series of highly publicized experiments involving some dozen terminally ill patients, Dr. MacDougall was forced to concede that “soul substance” might become too agitated at the moment of death to be photographed. I don’t like having my picture taken either.
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It’s a scientific fact, a lot of people get depressed on Sundays, usually starting about 4 o’clock. They feel a kind of inexplicable grief as the afternoon is infiltrated by premonitions of the week to come. “Aren’t you scared?” you ask. I’m not entirely immune, if that’s what you mean. I crack open a fortune cookie and there’s no fortune inside.
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People kept coming into the apartment to collect stuff. One carried off some sort of boat. No one seemed to care. A neighbor from down the hall started stroking my face. Her boyfriend was standing right next to her, but didn’t say anything, just watched. Barely a week had passed since the man who had lived there shot himself in the head. Anyone can get a gun. It takes a person with a special grudge to use it.
City. River. Tree. 