This morning I’ve been thinking about Bangkok, Mitt Romney, and how objects contain the mystery of their own reality.

Which is to say to a school of resurrected fish, we must apply our imaginations.

Sometimes it’s frightening. The Collected Stories, we say, as if a story could be plucked up like a Matchbox car or a coin purse carved from coconut.

It takes a great deal of time to engage a mystery on its own terms. We mainly spend our time on other things. We are surrounded by beings, wise in their own materials, but it’s hard to listen.

To tell a story straight is to apprehend the one thread pulled through the many. I feel like my whole life is one big amateur hour; how can anyone say they know who 47 percent of us are?

Follow this thread, we say.

Living requires insistence. Often we feel weakened from the start.

What is brightly lit can be apocryphal. We should try looking in the dim places, in the teakwood and in the lamplight.

We must enter the room at dusk. When we pad across the grain, we should not forget that we are part of it.

Photos by Vanessa Boots, Kim Philley, and Matthieu Brion