Framing Devices

So exhausted yesterday that even though I had a long list of projects, I staggered around all day in a kind of Neanderthal daze. Went for one long walk in an effort to clear out my head, but it didn’t work: The woods along the river, sans foliage, are too ominous-looking:



I’ve had this kind of writing conundrum inside my head for a couple of days:

A blind man and a lame man are hauled up in front of a rabbinical magistrate in some Polish shetel, accused of plundering an orchard.

Both insisted they were innocent.

“How could I steal those apples?” said the blind man. “I can’t see them.”

“How could I steal those apples?” said the lame man. “I can’t walk to the orchard.”

“The two of you working together stole those apples,” said the rabbi. “The lame man riding on the blind man’s back.”

I need the essence of the anecdote but an edgier crime, an edgier set of maladies.

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Lucius hated my proclivity for framing devices. “So fucking trite, man,” he’d tell me. “Like Nicholas Fuckin’ Sparks levels of banality.”