I would tell you of the night the stars set the house ablaze, like great winking cats, eyes wide with the haunted shine, pupil slits but twinkles in the New Year fog. Yet to do so I would tell you of the wrath of my father and the jealousy of my mother, the battered curses of generations come true, forlorn like genius monkeys who could copy Shakespeare but to a world that had momentarily looked away. I would tell you of the dog on the beach at dawn, the one that died under weird circumstances, and the things gazed on in the dusk. I would need to tell you how light behaves in the midnight place my family had been sworn away from, on pain of instant reincarnation. It is a long, queer story. But I would tell you these things, as they are true, though I know you would call it profane and lies, lies, lies.

If only I had the talent to lie, then the story would be but one story, not the deck of tales, the nested dolls, the shards of mosaic that it must become. How can I begin, then? How does it end? It must end as I begin the story, saying, “This is the end of the tale, here is the beginning. This is the beginning of the tale, you already know the end.”