I am cleaning out my closets and generally throwing stuff away. Today I came across a ton of brilliant and largely unpublished manuscripts I’d written during the last decades. Here’s one from 1988:
Twenty-two novels by Miguel
I
“He just stood there and let it hit him.”
-July 5, 19–
(Lake Titicaca)
II
“Your legs moved in your sleep, like you were chasing a rabbit in a dream.”
“Did I get it?”
-April 10, 19–
(Borneo)
III
“I was just thinking…”
“Yeah?”
“What if she opens it up?”
“Mmm.”
“I mean, what if she looks inside?”
“…”
-Feb. 6, 19–
(West Berlin)
IV
“Her name, her name…”
-May 11, 19–
(Cody)
V
“Living next door to genius – living right next door to it… is the solution…”
-Oct. 30, 19–
(Palo Alto)
VI
“O! You have been bad little children!”
Aug. 4, 19–
(Eisschicht)
VII
“That smell, o! It reminds me… it reminds me…”
-Sept. 11, 19–
(Mannefiore)
VIII
“The spork is an eating utensil which combines the properties of the spoon with those of the fork.”
-Oct. 29, 19–
IX
“I haven’t the S-L-I-G-H-T-E-S-T.”
-Dec. 26, 19–
(Redding)
X
“She told me it was a beauty mark.”
-Jan. 2, 19–
(Brasilia)
XI
“They had beliefs… but… they were not our beliefs…”
-March 11, 19–
(Mexico City)
XII
“Let’s get a few things straight.”
-Nov. 4, 19–
(Hilo)
XIII
“They got together and went into those hills up there, with machetes.”
-July 9, 19–
(Wailea)
XIV
“The AIDS virus is an icosahedron – a twenty-sided solid figure with seventy-two antenna-like projections…”
-Oct. 29, 19–
(Tokyo)
XV
“You can owe me for it.”
-July 5, 19–
(Katmandu)
XVI
“And when you sit her back up, her eyes open again.”
-July 7, 19–
(Naxos)
XVII
“Those little lines in your lips, that go up and down like that, like this, that gets me, it really gets me.”
-July 15, 19–
(Monaco)
XVIII
“Just one, right here, on the cheek.”
-Aug. 5, 19–
(Nice)
XIX
“I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody.”
-April-May, 19–
(Tuscon)
XX
“Of course I hate them, I must hate them.”
-Aug. 5, 19–
(Monaco)
and
-April 17, 19–
Vienna International Centre
XXI
“If I had it to do over again, next time I would yield to the semi, even though I had right-of-way.”
-June 10, 19–
(Bellingham)
XXII
“Her hands… her hands, though, gave her away.”
-Feb. 28, 19–
(Ivory Coast)




