My New Yorker Life, March 13, 2017

On the day I turned 43, I retyped 43 sentences from the first 43 pages of the March 13 issue of The New Yorker. I didn't want any sentences with names, titles, or place names, and so I'd just read until I found a sentence on each page that fit my criteria. This both a lot like and very different from My Life by Lyn Hejinian, and anything by Conceptual Writers.

How refugees escape to safety. She is working on a novel. As if we need data to prove that human reason has its limits! Create something personal for your home with one of these needlepoint kits. He has already rethought the cavernous 808 drums of his city’s sound. It blends the romance between the son of an oyster farmer and the daughter of an aristocrat with a criminal investigation into the disappearance of several tourists. The comic action – set against the backdrop of war and chaos sparked by governmental folly – involves traumas and comas, grief and anguish. Best show on television. Dance music, with its easy beat and ever-expanding appeal, has influenced all kinds of musicians, banging sounds and styles into rigid form while working through new tones in real time. They changed the face of a nation. Who said there’s no more music on television? We’re bringing you art + ideas that inspire and provoke. It is time to rattle the cage. And the cast was charged with obscenity. We’re in the late eighties, with appropriate music cues.

Just when you thought you’d seen it all. Best of the year! Its curiously symmetrical composition has a flattening effect. Opera and dance have a long history as bedfellows, though since the late nineteenth century they have been more or less estranged. The tall man puts on the chignon and the little voice again. According to the legend, the impish goblins like to materialize in dark, humid corners, mostly after dusk, and sometimes when the air moistens with rain. My no. 1 color combination – as featured in my collections dating back to the 1960s and now revisited here in spring 2017. See: museums, monuments and memorials. Catch the blossoms. The month-long celebration of international cultures offers two embassy open houses. We’re familiar with the contours of the story.

A man of few intimates, he often cites acquaintances. We’ve been told that a few of the ticket holders are planning to cause trouble. But I’m a human first.

If nobody comes here, it’s not the land of the free. A dozen or so people show up each day, looking for advice, protection, and a place to sleep. My life here is so hard and dangerous. The accommodations are clean, if rudimentary: creaky wooden floors, clanking radiators, leaky bathrooms, and steel-framed beds. Behold, as I guide our conversation to my narrow area of expertise. The real story, in real time. Does this feel calm? I am going for the unknown. I don’t have enough money in my wallet. More people are making hasty decisions. Is this normal? I always have my own rules, and I can bend them if I want. Like heaven.