CONTENTS

1. MORE THAN HALFWAY

Special Orders

Cotton Candy

Branch Library

Playing the Odds

My Father's Track-and-Field Medal, 1932

Cold Calls

Second-Story Warehouse

The Swimmers

The Chardin Exhibition

On the Rhine

Kraków, 6 A.M. 17

Elegy for the Jewish Villages

Soutine: A Show of Still Lifes

The Minimalist Museum

Self-portrait

A Few Encounters with My Face

Man Without a Face

To My Shadow

More Than Halfway

A Partial History of My Stupidity

2. TO THE CLEARING

Late March

Green Night

To D.B.

Bounty

To Houston

Eighteen Steps

Charades

Boy with a Headset

Green Figs

The Sweetness

To Lethargy

Gnostic Gospels

A New Theology

Happiness Writes White

I Wish I Could Paint You

To the Subway

As I Walked Home from the Hospital

Green Couch

A Night in September

After a Long Insomniac Night

Acknowledgments