The house seems incongruous on the immaculate street. There are weeds invading the spaces between the broken tiles that lead up to the flaking front door, and a plastic bag rustles, as it struggles to ... [+]
When they told me I was dying, which I wasn't, I began to miss the things in the world which I didn't even like about the world—the hideous traffic on 95, for instance, which I found myself sitting in, going nowhere on my way home, in no hurry now that I was dying. I will miss this traffic, I thought, feeling surrounded—girded—by people and life and desire in the lanes. And the truck, the 18-wheeler shouldering in, trying to pass on the right (I always hated trucks), struck me now as a vessel of human kindness, people helping people they don't even know by bringing them food from far away. I w