Don Salado wore a Mason’s hat with a three-cornered brim. Don Salado is a firmament of someone else’s mind, thoughts thought by someone else, thoughts that are different than mine. These are not my thoughts; they belong to someone other than me, someone who isn’t me. I think in italics, not un-italicized thoughts or thoughts that don’t belong to me or were thought by me. Italics (branch of the Indo-European language family that includes many former languages of Italy, including Latin and Umbrian) I think in these, not someone else’s non-italicized thoughts.
The man in the hat knew none of these people: Izabal, the drunkard Wenceslaus of Wenzel Venceslao, the greatest-great grandson of Jan Želivský, Žofie Bavorská, Johanna of Bavaria or Don Salado, he knew none of them. He knew the harridan and her sister, the legless man and the alms man, the man without a left hand and Seder grocery, whose store was next to the Waymart across from the aqueduct near a big overgrown maple tree. And he knew how to use italics, even when it was improper to do so. He knew how to count to one-thousand, forwards and backwards, how to fold a small piece of paper into a crane, how to eat with a knife and fork and how to cinch his hat-string under his chin. Beyond that he felt it was unnecessary to know anything else, anything more. He knew how to boil meat and potatoes, yams and cauliflower. He had a faint knowledge of macramé and tatting, double-stitching and hebetation (hebetatus, past participle of hebetare, from hebet, hebes) and once fed a nanny-goat a tin can. He met a man with foul breath and chaplets and a woman with a deadweight leg and a bent back. He offered to tat the woman with the deadweight leg a stocking, but she said she had enough stockings already and anything extra would go to waste.
The man in the hat knew none of these people: Izabal, the drunkard Wenceslaus of Wenzel Venceslao, the greatest-great grandson of Jan Želivský, Žofie Bavorská, Johanna of Bavaria or Don Salado, he knew none of them. He knew the harridan and her sister, the legless man and the alms man, the man without a left hand and Seder grocery, whose store was next to the Waymart across from the aqueduct near a big overgrown maple tree. And he knew how to use italics, even when it was improper to do so. He knew how to count to one-thousand, forwards and backwards, how to fold a small piece of paper into a crane, how to eat with a knife and fork and how to cinch his hat-string under his chin. Beyond that he felt it was unnecessary to know anything else, anything more. He knew how to boil meat and potatoes, yams and cauliflower. He had a faint knowledge of macramé and tatting, double-stitching and hebetation (hebetatus, past participle of hebetare, from hebet, hebes) and once fed a nanny-goat a tin can. He met a man with foul breath and chaplets and a woman with a deadweight leg and a bent back. He offered to tat the woman with the deadweight leg a stocking, but she said she had enough stockings already and anything extra would go to waste.
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