Late at night I hold my hand close to a lamp, trying to see through to the other side, and find myself inexplicably sad that the universe just under my own skin is as distant and unknowable as the farthest reaches of space. I think about how the things that are good are also secretly gateways to the things that are bad.
Like that time in Tanzania when a bunch of school children were sent home for laughing too much, and how the laughing became an epidemic spread from child to parent to neighbor. How people had fainting spells and rashes and crying jags in between bouts of uncontrollable laughter for months and months. How they couldn't stop laughing no matter how they tried.
I imagine that very few people were brave enough to tell jokes for a very long time after that.
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