1. Existence

A tall man with short grey hair and an erratic schedule. He never had owned a black turtleneck in his life, but he always pictured himself wearing them regularly when he might find out where he belonged, and after he had settled in and was firmly ensconced there. (Where he belonged was where he lived, amongst nice houses that were never really grand and small ones that were never really quaint.) A covered bridge, or a really good cafe within ten minutes’ walk of his front door was where he liked to think of himself being. He thought, if you’d have pressed him on it, that a place can’t really be permanent until you feel like you’d never get tired of it. Otherwise, you’re just slumming it out on the way to somewhere else. His driver’s license said “R— A—, 190lbs” — he considered throwing it in the shredder along with his social security card, his passport and his checkbook, mainly because of this idea he’d got into his head, that he was tired of being nothing more than a collection of numbers on cards. Shred them, walk across and out the back yard with only the clothes on your back, and be born again, was the idea. It was a brave idea, so when he at last resigned himself to the fact that he would probably never attempt it, he thought it was because of cowardice. But it wasn’t because of that, it was because we all know that it just isn’t a very good idea.