17.

Some novelist somewhere is missing a career-making book by not writing yet another Shakespeare story. Not about Shakespeare in love or in the theater, but about Shakespeare in "retirement." After all, he just stopped writing. What happened? And what happened in his life, and his mind, in those later years back in Stratford?

Given that the limits of our knowledge and understanding are so narrow (though we love to pretend otherwise), it seems possible, perhaps probably, that what we observe and measure in farthest space is merely the earliest birth pangs of a universe, with all the vast mystery that implies.

After you’ve finished with the lilies of the field, you’d do well to consider also the stars in the sky, how they either nova, or don’t.

Overheard in the parking lot of Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida:
A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

The Peaks of Otter continues >>

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