The problem with modern fiction is flora: it’s quite literary
to pepper the ground with cedar, jasmine, jacaranda, chokecherry,
all willy-nilly without respect to climate. The problem with now
is that the past is a pickaxe, an archaeologist with a furrowed brow
chiseling around the edges of what was meant to remain a secret.
The problem with beaches is erosion; made of granite,
they would not be sloughing off into the ocean, which, incidentally,
is warming, and that is the problem with it, though I could name two or three.
The problem with tuna salad is mayonnaise. The problem with art
is proving its problematic value. The problem with Chopin is Mozart
and the problem with Dizzy Gillespie is Wynton Marsalis
and the problem with everything that has come since is
everything that came before. The problem with dying is everyone
does it in their own time and no one picks their own mahogany coffin.