Status Updates From Life: A User's Manual

I think I know a good deal about physical suffering. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying…

Today’s apartment exploration: Madam Moreau hates Paris & James Sherwood doesn’t seem upset over losing a million dollars.

Puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.

The trapeze artist opened his grip, and with a long scream, describing a perfect parabola, he crashed to the ground.

After a few weeks he put the labels back in the shoebox where he kept them and tidied the box away at the back of his cupboard. He didn’t start on anything special again.

The pieces are readable, take on a sense, only when assembled; in isolation, a puzzle piece means nothing - just an impossible question, an opaque challenge.