My bed was pushed up hard against the wall just below the window. I loved to sleep with the windows open. Rainy nights were the best of all: I would open my windows and put my head on my pillow and close my eyes and feel the wind on my face and listen to the trees sway and creak. There would be raindrops blown onto my face, too, if I was lucky, and I would imagine that I was in my boat on the ocean and that it was swaying with the swell of the sea. I did not imagine that I was a pirate, or that I was going anywhere. I was just on my boat.

We get to experience the same thing in very different ways with different parts of ourselves.

When I was young, you know, the first foreign editions that would come in of anything of mine, I'd sit there and look at them as these strange and wonderful artifacts.

There are some as are what they are. And there are some as aren't what they seem to be. And there are some as only seem to be what they seem to be.

What’s your name, lad?” “Newton. Newton Pulsifer.” “LUCIFER? What’s that you say? Are ye of the Spawn of Darkness, a tempting beguiling creature from the pit, wanton limbs steaming from the fleshpots of Hades, in tortured and lubricious thrall to your Stygian and hellish masters?” “That’s Pulsifer,” explained Newton. “With a P. I don’t know about the other stuff, but we come from Surrey.” The voice on the phone sounded vaguely disappointed.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.