"It’s
in the busted minds of troubled offspring, or among bones not quite picked
clean, or poking out of the smithereens of collapse that I think the true
truths are found."
Bill
Cotter, Issue208 of The Paris Review
Now you tell me. I’ve been
seeking truth in all the wrong places.
Handymen have been repairing
years of neglect on my house and in the process have made big piles of rotten
wood, stripped wiring, broken flower pots, abandoned lawn ornaments decomposing
cardboard boxes filled with sprinkler parts to systems no longer extant, and
paint cans with 4 ounces of dried orange paint in the bottom but which have to
be separated and dumped as hazardous waste.
Before they finish loading the piles into the truck to
take to the dump, I should sift through these smithereens of collapse.
I will not be deterred in my quest for
truth. If I don’t find anything, I’ll sing the Lionel Richie song "Sunday Morning" into a fan. Perhaps I should get a tetanus shot first.