Phylogeny Recapitulates Ontogeny

My little brother was about a two-by-squirt when he cut out a paper heart and gave it to our babysitter. She kissed him on the cheek and he went back and cut out thirty-two more.

I envy him for learning so young how you can't recreate a first experience, no matter what your construction paper cutting skills are, or how good a writer you think you are.

Never believe your own press, especially small-town accolades, like what someone tells you in a small town. There are people out there,"serial encouragers," who say you're good, but forget to say everything, so you end up cutting out hearts, forever, in a cutting-out-hearts nervous hospital on the planet Mars, incarcerated in dillusion. Never once did they say how hard it was, or that you would have to improve each piece from the last, because the fickle reader was like a heroin addict, always trying to achieve their first high, or first paper heart, always wanting to see something different, something better, some other organ, like the spleen. So, the cutter-outer wears a path from his art table, between the dirty clothes, down the hall, to her door, where the first heart is taped for all to see, hoping he has the next great piece of art that she will hang, and reward him with another kiss, juicier and sloppier than the first.