"You are wasting your natural talents by being afraid to stray too far from the familiar."

holding the lid of one of the balsa wood boxes ben keeps on his workbenches up to the light, i noticed that there was an imperfection in the wood, a crack that went straight through the lid, top to bottom, front to back, through the length of it. i could see sunlight, little seam. not even sure why i was doing it at first, i picked at it with my fingers, with an exacto, with a sculpting gouge. like obsessive compulsion, like demonic possession, i worked at that seam until the insides of my thumb and fingers were bright red.

until others have no choice but acknowledge the reality of the wound.

there is a hole, now, in that lid--about the width of my thumb. through it, i can see the interior bottom of a fifty cent balsa wood box. what am i doing? i don't know what i am doing. do i believe if i dig myself deep enough, i'll reach the other side?

the problem with straying from the familiar is that the familiar is where i am. my perch, my place of rest, my grave. everything else is infinite black space, lacking even the cold comfort of gravity.

there are a million ways to fall through eternity. in most of them, you just fall.