Jesse Scott Owen

Five stories:

—A frog is set in a pot of water, and the water set to a boil. Soon, the water gets uncomfortably warm, and the frog jumps out of the pot.

—Eileen Simpson wrote that when she was married to John Berryman he would sometimes leave to see Delmore Schwartz, saying, on his way out the door, "I am off to Cambridge, to show my new poem to God."

—A friend recently went on vacation, and as he is not connected in any especially modern way to the rest of the world—he has a landline, and checks his email at the library—he emailed a few people to inform them he'd be away. A sparse email, but two lines stood out:

There's nothing that has to be done
I don't even feel like doing this

—A blind man stands on a ladder, grasping for hours at where he believes must be the next rung until finally, fed up, he climbs back down the ladder.

—Another man, not blind this time, gets home from a construction job, where his partner inquires, "Why'd you leave? Did you not like it there?"

"No, I finished."

"But, was it not nice? Weren't there lovely people? Why didn't you stay?"

"I...There's nothing more to do. It's done."

———

So anyways, I am leaving New York.