At twelve, he had an epiphany of futility when suddenly he understood the concept of tolerance in building materials. Now, chaos was everywhere. At some microscopic level, a surface as smooth as, say, glass, was pitted and scarred. Everything was illusion; nothing could be trusted—no man, no God, no book. He formed the habit of carefully examining a chair before sitting in it. Public transportation terrified him. Eventually, he came to regard the universe as a conspiracy. At that point he was ready to begin, although he did not yet know it.
For years he prayed only for God to ignore him. It was the chance remark of a television poet that unlocked the taste of stone within him. He began to write The Chronicles of Stupidity Through the Ages in blank verse. Reams of material in every form rolled from his typewriter. He found that he could compose a sonnet on any object salvaged from the trash, but if a serious subject were chosen, words would hide their meanings from him. So, ironic humor permeated his writing—alternately bitter and compassionate. He became skittish, not knowing what to write and feeling at the mercy of chance.
Ultimately, he came to see that chance was his greatest ally in the attempt to make sense of the senseless. Gradually, he learned to have faith in objects and images—in their power to wound or to heal. He let go of his mistrust of words and began to comfort them in their weakness. He understood that his thoughts were no less elusive than the rain. The indistinctness at the edges of things, which he had always feared, became the standard by which he measured everything.