Glass House

He’d always imagined himself in a glass house. A big glass house by the sea. Was the glass house on a hill, and were there other hills in the vicinity? Oh yes. Yes on both counts. So many hills. Hills all over the place. Hills as far as the eye could see. Countless hills. Actually, twenty-two hills. Twenty-two hills was as far as his eyes could see, on account of his nearsightedness. There were likely more hills, many more, beyond the twenty-two that he could see and count, but the curvature of the earth…you see, the curvature of it obscured…and the horizon…I believe it was Archimedes who… His thought trailed off. Some topics took him out of his depth, and some topics took him way out of his depth, and that was most topics. What did he know, really, about the curvature of the earth? Just that it was. Just that it be. What was within his depth, anyway? An understanding of how little he knew? Was that all? At one point he thought he knew hats, but then he ran into a friend who was wearing a hat he did not recognize, and it turned out to be a very common hat. In that moment he realized that hats were like birds and trees and toasters and toilets. Out of his depth.

The terrain—the landscape, as it were, if not the topography—around the glass house would be hilly, for sure. Undulating is how he would describe it to his colleagues, right before blushing. Because undulating suggested hips, at least to him. Hips moving, in rhythmic, sinuous fashion. On the subway on his way to work he loosened an imaginary tie.

What was that old saying about glass houses? You shouldn’t throw stones in them or something? That was pretty obvious. And not just stones: toasters, too. Wrenches and screwdrivers. Shotputs. He could go on. Anything heavy, really. Anything with heft.

Was it at glass houses or in? Probably you shouldn’t do either. Either way, rock beats glass every time. Like in that game. Or was that paper? Honeycomb? Flax?

His mind was not yet gone, but it was going. He could feel it going. The subtlety of the going, the slow datum dispersal. A house could not be made entirely of glass. There would need to be wood in there. Wooden beams. Cornices. Dry wall, probably. Cement, which he liked to pronounce see-ment. He knew nothing of houses, of the construction of them. Out of his depth. Beyond his ken. But think of all the natural light!

A glass house would be terrible for the birds. You could kill two birds with one stone, but one stone would shatter the glass house. And if the birds survived the stone, the glass house would finish the job, for they would fly right into it, on account of birds not understanding glass.

He did not understand glass, either. However, he knew not to run into it at full speed. He knew that much.

Except, he supposed, for that one time when he ran into a glass door at full speed. Which was—he pondered the passage of time—yesterday.

The subway smelled of…what was that smell? He thought hard. He’d smelled the smell before, many times. Was it formaldehyde? Must? Mold?

Subway. That was it. The subway smelled exactly like subway.