But I can hate you more than you can ever imagine.

When it comes to originality, I’ve always appreciated two conflicting views. The first comes from Ecclesiastes. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” On the other hand, there’s the relatively traditional belief that every work of art must be completely unique, and unrelated to anything that came before it.

That’s why I like Pound’s urging, “Make it new.” That’s a perfect compromise between Ecclesiastes and egotism.

I told Julia that I appreciate her Japanese limericks, and congratulated Henri on his Irish haikus. My compliments offended both of them, and that makes me embarrassingly satisfied.

Some idiot hid a bomb in his shoe, so now footwear is inspected. Someone alleged a plot to use liquid explosives on a plane, so now I can’t carry a bottle of wine with me when I fly. And recently, a suicide bomber tried to kill a Saudi prince with a bomb hidden in his colon.

I wonder how long I’ll be able to fly without having my rectum searched for explosives?

“I’ve learned that you can keep vomiting long after you think you’re finished,” Sandra reported with some enthusiasm.

That was news to me; I haven’t experienced reverse peristalsis in decades. I wonder what else I’m missing during my self-induced stagnation?

I used to see him all the time outside my studio. He’s a balding, stocky, middle-aged man with a bad haircut who always wore the same—or at least identical—denim jacket and pants. Cigarette Man looked like a human advertisement for the joys of smoking tobacco. Even on a still day, he rocked back and forth like he was standing on the bow of a ship headed into a typhoon. He’s the only person I’ve ever seen who could swagger without moving his feet. And every time he put the cigarette to his mouth, he inhaled like a man facing a firing squad, as if that might be the last cigarette he’d ever smoke. When he was done smoking, he’d toss the cigarette butt under his sports car, as if marking the same territory he claimed by parking there.

One day Cigarette Man showed up without his automobile, and I tried to guess what happened. Did the authorities revoke his driving license after a drunken accident? Did he lose his car in a poker game? Or maybe he just decided to walk instead of drive to lose some weight. So many possibilities, so little information.

A month or two ago, I realized I hadn’t seen Cigarette Man in a while. I started looking for him, but he was gone. After not spotting him for some time, I concluded I’d never see him again. I had lots of theories, but not a clue as to what happened to him or his car.

But today, Cigarette Man reappeared! He has a decent haircut, a new corduroy jacket, and pants that fit. At least he still has the same inimitable smoking technique. Too bad I’ll never know what happened, if only because I’m too shy to ask.

You know, we [the Americans] mobilize a unit [of Afghan soldiers] to go in there, that Samarra’s a little town north of Baghdad that was a persistent problem for the U.S. The troops hit a roadside bomb on the way out the gate and the battalion commander says, well, I’m through with this. He takes his pistol, his staff car, and he’s gone. And there’s a funny line from the U.S. embedded advisor who, in his own understated fashion, said: That was not the best day for morale.

The host, Steve Inskeep, laughed at the story. And why not? An exploding roadside bomb turning human beings into little pieces of shredded meat is pretty hilarious. Or, at least it is if one views armed conflict as an abstract video game. Boom! Ambush! Commander deserts! Lose forty-five points!

I suppose fighting has been this way for millennia: dehumanize the enemy, then kill, maim, and torture indefinitely. About the only thing that’s changed is that we can now laugh at the horrors since we’re thousands of miles away from the screams of dying human beings and the smell of burning flesh.

And that concludes today’s harangue. Everybody go back to whatever it was you were doing; I’m returning to self-indulgent art work.

That was fifteen years ago, and this is now. For at least a decade, I’ve had the ability to create compact disks, but never have. I mistakenly concluded that I needed new technology, when all I really needed was better ideas.

I’m remembering that lesson now that Leica’s selling its first good digital camera. Essentially, it’s the digital equivalent of my thirty-five year old film Leica, and I’d like to have the new model. The camera body without a lens costs seven thousand dollars, so I won’t be getting one any time soon. And anyway, the plastic Nikon I’ve been using is more appropriate for my needs.

If I really needed to use a Leica, I could put film in my old one; I could buy a lot of film for seven thousand dollars. And so, this is one siren song I’ll ignore.