A COSMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE MUNDANE
I must tell you about my deeming significant and cosmic a sequence of very small, silly events. You will think I am one of "Those" types after this, one of those Northern California woo-wee types, but I'm willing to take the risk.

It begins with a book I read as a child and have never forgotten titled “Who Needs Donuts.” It was an illustrated book, the style like something Robert Crumb might have done if he was doing illustrations for children. Very unusual, crowded black and white drawings. It’s about a kid who leaves home in search of donuts and of course, he gets donuts and then realizes he’s lonely. For whatever reason, I have searched for this book for years, not knowing that it had gone out of print. I couldn’t exactly remember the title nor the author so naturally librarians found me very irritating. I gave up thinking to myself, "someday, I will just stumble across it. It is meant to return to me.” I don’t know why I thought this, or why it was so important. Now, move to present day. I had sent my novel off to my agent and that day I went onto Zoetrope-online as I often do, and decided to visit Maryanne Stahl’s “office” which I do from time to time. Maryanne is the author of two wonderful novels, "Forgive the Moon" and the "Opposite Shore" and she also happens to share my agent (she had him first). So there’s this odd topic having to do with salmon, which nobody has posted under. Usually I don’t read posts where no one else has responded. But it caught my attention. She had posted a comic that this guy Mark Stamaty is doing for, I think it’s the New Yorker, that is about the world of book publishing. I think it’s called Boox. And I thought to myself: wow, that looks oddly familiar in a way I can’t put my finger on. So I google the guy and lo and behold it’s my DONUT guy! Not only that, the book got such a cult following that publishers decided it ought to come back into print after 30 years. So I got chills. I can’t explain any of this, but I had this feeling that this was all an omen for the selling of my own book. The fact that it appeared in Maryanne’s office, who shares my agent, the fact that his comic was on book publishing. I KNOW how ridiculous this could seem…but that is the conclusion I drew. And I promptly ordered the book from Amazon of course.