conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Angela, Jonas, Best with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'How to Read the Air'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: How to Read the Air
  After that Angela carried copies of novels she had never heard of with her to work. She made a committed effort to read several of them on the subway, just as I also honestly tried to become a lay expert on the regulations governing international and human rights law, which she said were the only two things she could love about the law.
  He started talking then at great length about the challenges facing an office like ours. He repeatedly used the phrase "It's a whole new game out there."
  I let him talk like that without interruption for more than a half hour, during which he touched on everything from the Patriot Act to the FBI to how seriously fucked you have to be in your home country to get a visa in America. By the time he finally came to the reason why he had called me into his office I was hardly listening anymore. I knew the outcome long before then and had spared myself the misery of anticipation. I don't even remember him saying, "We're going to have to let you go immediately. There's simply not enough money left to keep paying you." By that time I had left the building and was picturing the walk I was going to take later that afternoon across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a bright, almost spotless late October afternoon, brisk without being too cold, and I was certain there would be a good, strong wind blowing across the East River that would carry me across.
  The trip to Nashville had been my father's idea, or not exactly his idea but his boss's, a slightly heavyset man with thick rolls of fat around the nape of his neck and a pale bald head that reminded Yosef of the moon before it had fully risen and hung low and dim, its stains visible to the naked eye. He knew my father had a fondness for country music and had told him multiple times that if he really wanted to hear and understand it, then he had to make his way to Nashville. My father's love of country music was one of the few things he had brought with him from Addis. Kenny Rogers had been the first American singer to break his heart, but there were others as well. As he was sitting in an outdoor café terrace along the city's main Bole Road in 1973, a song had snuck in from a parked car radio and through the idle chatter of the other men sitting next to him. He couldn't have repeated a single line, but that didn't matter, because he had understood the mood of the song, and he knew the spirit in which it had been written was the same as his. Decades later, when his English was fluent and he had learned all the standard clichés, he would tell me that the song "spoke to him." For now, though, there were better and more difficult ways of describing it, and he would have to say that the song reminded him of a certain type of sadness that came to him whenever he found himself alone. He had realized at a young age—eight, to be precise, in the weeks following his mother's death—that the world was a cruel and unfair place, and yet despite that, he hated watching it pass. He couldn't stand to see some days end, and that song said it all without having to say any of it.
  My father had been dreaming of boxes since coming to America, and he hoped that this trip might end those dreams, which despite his best efforts had continued to haunt him. He saw the boxes folded and flat, stacked one on top of another in long, endless, elegant rows. He saw them made of cardboard and cement, paper, plastic, and wood. Boxes large enough to hold a man and small enough to fit under an arm, into the palm of a hand. His life had been made and unmade by boxes, and what he felt toward them could only be called a guilty obligation, one that hung hard and heavy around his neck like a debt that however much he tried could never be fully repaid. At night, in his dreams, he gave the boxes the consideration they deserved, granting them their full and proper place in his life. He spoke to them. He asked them questions and waited in vain for a response. He sized them up and determined what their contents could possibly bear: a hand-carved bed frame made in Dubai; a pair of woman's shoes, preferably Italian and a size 6 with adjustable leather straps for an ankle that may have grown an inch or two larger; two arms, half a torso, and one right leg of a thirty-five-year-old man who stood five-foot-ten and had been reduced to one hundred thirty-four pounds by a combination of hunger and illness.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We parted at the school's front doors with a promise that I would see him later. I arrived in my classroom ten minutes before the first bell rang. In my first days of teaching I had always arrived at least thirty or forty minutes early, in large part to gape in wonder at my classroom and my place in it. Other teachers used the room later in the afternoon, but it was mine at the beginning of the day; those were the best hours to claim it. As the sun rose higher, I would watch the light stream in through the windows and spread across the darkly polished wooden floors and the desks that in previous decades had been bolted to them. For the first couple of years it had always struck me as a remarkable sight, one worth waking up a little bit earlier to witness and for which I would often remain grateful throughout the day. Recently I had stopped doing this, and generally arrived only minutes before the morning bell.
  I took my place behind my desk and waited for my students. I hadn't done that since my first year at the academy, when every day was full of a punishing anxiety. I needed those thirty minutes behind my desk to remind myself that I did indeed know what I was doing, and had every right to be there. Angela had caught hold of that anxiety as well, and for nine months had woken up early and made breakfast for the both of us. On numerous occasions I'd run part of my lecture by her.
  She would sit at the table and pretend to take notes on what I was saying, and in more mischievous moments would raise her hand and ask questions to which she knew I had the answer.
  The first of my students trickled in a few minutes before the bell. They were the smartest of the group and took their seats near the center. The rest arrived in no discernible order, but I noticed that all of them, smart and stupid alike, seemed to hardly talk, or, if they talked, it was only in whispers. Most said hello as they entered, but their voices were more hesitant than usual, as if they weren't sure that it was really me they were addressing.
  I watched them as they filed past my desk. They were an attractive group, and several of the girls in the class of mainly boys would undoubtedly grow up to be described by both men and women as striking, if not beautiful, a fact most had already begun to prepare themselves for with their year-round tans and delicately applied streaks of blush and mascara. I waited until they had all taken their seats, and when I looked at them, I saw something approaching a hint of wonder on their faces, which may very well have always been there but which I was just recognizing.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I arrived in my classroom ten minutes before the first bell rang. In my first days of teaching I had always arrived at least thirty or forty minutes early, in large part to gape in wonder at my classroom and my place in it. Other teachers used the room later in the afternoon, but it was mine at the beginning of the day; those were the best hours to claim it. As the sun rose higher, I would watch the light stream in through the windows and spread across the darkly polished wooden floors and the desks that in previous decades had been bolted to them. For the first couple of years it had always struck me as a remarkable sight, one worth waking up a little bit earlier to witness and for which I would often remain grateful throughout the day. Recently I had stopped doing this, and generally arrived only minutes before the morning bell.
  I took my place behind my desk and waited for my students. I hadn't done that since my first year at the academy, when every day was full of a punishing anxiety. I needed those thirty minutes behind my desk to remind myself that I did indeed know what I was doing, and had every right to be there. Angela had caught hold of that anxiety as well, and for nine months had woken up early and made breakfast for the both of us. On numerous occasions I'd run part of my lecture by her.
  She would sit at the table and pretend to take notes on what I was saying, and in more mischievous moments would raise her hand and ask questions to which she knew I had the answer.
  The first of my students trickled in a few minutes before the bell. They were the smartest of the group and took their seats near the center. The rest arrived in no discernible order, but I noticed that all of them, smart and stupid alike, seemed to hardly talk, or, if they talked, it was only in whispers. Most said hello as they entered, but their voices were more hesitant than usual, as if they weren't sure that it was really me they were addressing.
  I watched them as they filed past my desk. They were an attractive group, and several of the girls in the class of mainly boys would undoubtedly grow up to be described by both men and women as striking, if not beautiful, a fact most had already begun to prepare themselves for with their year-round tans and delicately applied streaks of blush and mascara. I waited until they had all taken their seats, and when I looked at them, I saw something approaching a hint of wonder on their faces, which may very well have always been there but which I was just recognizing.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: One of the last things Angela told me once we had agreed to a divorce was that she was afraid of disappearing.
  Once I would have had a hard time finding fault in that. I would have thought that there was little else that one could look forward to in life other than being set free from others' demands and the obligations they placed on both your time and heart. The invisibility that came with that freedom was a small price to pay for all the damage and pain that could be avoided as a result. By the time I had packed my bags and was preparing to leave Angela, I was grateful I no longer believed that. I hope that when I settle into someplace for the evening that I will have the courage to call her and tell her that while the legal terms of our marriage may end soon enough, we are still not finished, and won't be I hope for many years yet to come. Our marriage, for all its shortcomings and failures, has taught me as much. I tried to explain this to Angela while we sat one last time on our bench, worrying about our fates once we were separated.
  And while at the time a part of me may have questioned the veracity of that statement, I no longer do. We do persist, whether we care to or not, with all our flaws and glory. If Angela, my mother, or even my father were here I would gather them close to me so I could tell them that despite what we've gone through, and despite our best attempts to escape one another, I'm certain beyond the slightest doubt that if there is one thing that has to be true, it's this.