p bA powerful short story collection that charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives.b ppI'm a seeker, the narrator of My Life as a Mystic says. A watcher of the skies. A pilgrim and a wanderer. I don't know, I couldn't stand law school. Such are the polar sentiments of the characters in the stories of David Borofka's iA Longing for Impossible Thingsi, which charts the yearning inherent in imperfect lives. ppTaking their cue from Fernando Pessoa's painful landscape of longing for the impossible, the ministers and missionaries of Fire and Coincidence look for more than what they find in their respective theologies they reject what they've been told in favor of what they feel. Meanwhile, everyday believers fall back upon their own intuition and pray for revelation to be forthcoming. Lovers are forced to recognize the finite limitations of their grand infatuations even as they hope for some small measure of long-lasting tenderness, while teenagers resign themselves to the inevitable