No. 86: Conflagration. A friend gave him a thousand wooden, poly-chromed dowels. At first he was delighted. The colours were rich and fine. In the end, they annoyed him, probably because they didn't appear to need any further adjustment or manipulation on his part. The dowels seemed, in fact, more like competition. At one point, he bundled them up and drove to the lake. There, on the beach, he sat in their midst, feeling like a dark flame in a rainbow-hued bonfire. When the sun went down, and the fire went out, he felt like a nesting shore-bird.