Scar catalog... In case you ever need to identify my body in the morgue on a television mini-series or in the middle of a street after I am sacrificed in the name of jihad: I have a scar above my upper lip, from the coffee table when I was three. I think we were living in the trailer. My right elbow was scarred on the pavement after tripping and falling while playing kick ball. I have calcium deposits under my right eye from a skull on skull collision with my brother during a game of vacant lot football. The most immense and amazing black eye resulted. I have three scars on my right knee to remind me of that long, dark night and two sheared telephone poles. I have calcium deposits under my left eye also. I needed a bookend to match the other and even out my face. I found it on the fetal ground of higher education while drunken phantoms kicked me. It was the second most amazing black eye of my life. My right forearm displays the result of punching out a store window, the knuckles of my right hand the blossoms of flesh meeting barroom mirror. Glass is not really a suitable sparring partner. I have a two inch scar on the back of my head courtesy of cheap, cheating hooligans and a 2x4. You won't see that one unless my head has been shaved for the sake of electrocution or lobotomy. Don’t even start wishing. The back of my right hand displays the result of my rollover into the farm fields of Mattituck, New York. It was not a very deep wound, but it made for an impressive scar. I lost the nail on my left big toe from an untended, untreated infection. Man it hurt when the dogs stood on that toe or I dropped something on it. The back of my left hand offers round reminders of the proper way to flip hamburgers in a frying pan. Away! Away! I have a tattoo of Arthur Rimbaud on my right biceps. No I am not showing you. It is odd to think that I have inflicted far more pain upon myself than life generally or the world in total has inflicted upon me and yet still I somehow cling to the belief that life is out to get me, that the world leans against me. Given the empirical data cited I think that these hypotheses could be wrong, very, very wrong.