Dear Molly,

Here's the coda to this morning's email. Why am I on the computer
again? Because a bike ride only lasts so long. The incorrigible
bookworm finds her way home.

I woke up this morning with my left arm pinned under the
pillow. As I sat up and slapped the blood back into it, I worried
that the dead arm might become a hex hanging over my day. A bad
omen. I kept thinking about it. Then, much later at the library, I
got a vision of Homer Simpson from Day of the Locust. Remember?
Homer has those funny hands. The image was comforting. My
experience referred to something. It was no longer random.

Dramatic pause. A moment of clarity. Literary references abound.

The reason I thought the arm might be a bad sign is because I read
something, once, about omens. Not sure what or where. There's a
murky soup of these ideas in my head. The Homer Simpson idea
came from the same pot. What kind of soup makes you sick and
then restores your health?

Will write more after a snack.


-Cassidy


P.S. The residue of my reading list lingers over this email like
coke in a Los Angeles bathroom stall. Can you tell what kind
it is? What quality? How much it cost me?



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