dennis scharnberg

Where is nothing?   Why it is here and here, and over there.   Nothing is everywhere.

Clifford O. Mounce,  A Portable Darkness.

“You are to be congratulated for your remarkable assumptions.”   Bob had thought the words over carefully, before he said them aloud to Millicent.

Brendan Shaughnessy,  Lobsters and Clams—A Novel.

A river.   A ribbon of khaki brown.   A particulate stream.   Depth can only be guessed at.   A sheet of greenish, brownish glass.   But the river is not there.   The river is never quite there.   The river is gone.   Continuously gone.   Or so he has been told.

Roone Giddings,  An Arrangement of Particles.

Who (or what) will shield me from knowing?

Chalmers van Nest,  The Trivial Quadrivium.

“Intellect is a shiny little box that we stow in the sock drawer.”   By this time Bradley was seated at his desk,  jotting down the words in his most careful script, by candlelight.

Chadwick Graves,  One Damned Thing After Another.

“Sneering revulsion for all things—that is my game,”  said Malcolm.   “And I’m damned good at it.”

Corliss Archer,  Boarding the Crazy Train.

“But Charlie, writing things out by hand is the new drawing.”   Elaine felt she was onto something.   Something important.

Diana Moone,  Living Well.

“A woman’s shoes rested inside a bucket.  A great red pail.  Someday I’d like to own one just like it.  Pure utility, yet pleasing to the eye.  Something to depend on.”  Kenneth’s thoughts rolled on, as jumbled and useless as ever.

Jason Starling, ed.,  Adventures in Narrative Parsimony.

That the stone falls the same way each time is the mystery.

Paul Uccelo,  The Enigma of the Box.