One day he saw he’d grown old in the service of stories. Salt on bread, dusk and heavy furniture–he sat alone for a long time. A geranium caught the last light at a window. Stories, reeling time backwards, the charity of time, a lifetime’s habit of making time soft. The old woman beside the Oyster River, who picked flowers; who the children knew to be peculiar–someone said the word “lobotomy” though no one knew what it meant–how he’d made up a story about her, so long ago. The woman with her florid face, who talked to herself, she took in the stray animals. Now, he saw he was old as well, saw the stars were of a different magnitude, and still, he thought, someone has to take the lost creatures, because the world is both harsh and simple.
Planet of the Blind 