Gregory Greenleaf

My Lab Echo and I have just set out for our daily walk down Cundy's Harbor Road when a red car pulls up alongside me. The driver is a man in his late 60s, and is wearing two or three days of gray stubble around his face.

I am sopping up a little gas I spilled on the garage floor while filling up my chainsaw. The rag came from the family rag bag that my wife Allison manages.

Get a piece of paper and draw a horizontal line. Above the line, write the word "fortune." Below the line, write the word "misfortune." In his analysis of fables and myths from around the world, the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut discovered a pattern.

Pause the film there, please. Take a look at this bicycle in the air, front tire at 6 o'clock and back tire at 11 o'clock.

It is summer and you've been working in your garden. You come inside after weeding and swatting mosquitoes. Your hands are covered in grime, sweat and bug guts. You go to a bathroom sink to wash your hands.

I hear it approaching and my hand reaches to my side, where I don't keep my holster. The noise of tires running over the tarred surface intensifies, and at any moment the vehicle will crest the hill.

What follows is the first paragraph of a college admissions essay I asked the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT to write for me. "As a high school student, I have always been drawn to the idea of working in the field of archaeology. While many of my classmates dream of becoming doctors or lawyers, I have always been drawn to the idea of exploring the past and uncovering the secrets that have been hidden beneath the earth for centuries."

I am standing in my backyard and looking up into a tree. Beside me is my loyal black Lab, Echo. He is looking up into the same tree.

Not too long ago I came home from my real job and, upon entering my real home, where my real wife and real kids and real pets live, I saw my real wife pulling out of a shopping bag a real plant.

It was while we were returning from a dad and daughters fishing and swimming trip in Woolwich that Molly mentioned that Calliope, the youngest child, was bleeding.