There are some tiny obvious details in human life that sur
vive the divine purpose of boring fools to death. In France,
all the way down south in Avallon, people like to eat cake.
The local bakers there spin up a little flour and chocolate into
the shape of a penguin. We came back again and again to a
certain window to admire a flock of them. But we never
bought one.
We found ourselves wandering through Italy, homesick for penguins.
Then a terrible and savage fire of the dog-days roared all
over the fourteenth Arondissement: which is to say it was
August: and three chocolate penguins appeared behind a win
dow near Place Denfert-Rochereau. We were afraid the Pa
risians would recognize them, so we bought them all and
snuck them home under cover.
We set them out on a small table above half the rooftops
of Paris. I reached out to brush a tiny obvious particle of dust
from the tip of a beak. Suddenly the dust dropped an inch
and hovered there. Then it rose to the beak again.
It was a blue spider.
If I were a blue spider, I would certainly ride on a train all
the way from Avallon to Paris, and I would set up my house
on the nose of a chocolate penguin. It’s just a matter of com
mon sense.
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