OF THE MANY THINGS THAT WOULD BE TRUE IF THIS ONE THING WERE TRUE

how would the story of life go if you knew for true god loved you ... some of you are like me at this point saying I can skip the rest of this ... still if it were true ... make believe ... he'd be helping you all the time directly or indirectly ... and I can't emphasize this point enough ... counting on you to do your part ... not just because you're supposed to or it would be worse if you didn't ... but because when you do you're in the swim again and things start to flow ... I don't mean physically though you dance with more skill ... or mentally ... if anything you've got more to do and more energy and more fatigue too and you've got to be up for the fight ... it's like books ... they can look real nice but you've got to get through them to see how nice they can really be ... or like being itself ... you know this ... some kinds of being are better than others and some you don't want to waste time on at all ... and it's like being happy ... it doesn't always make you content but you still know it's all right and as the sage says all manner of things are all right ... which is the point of the exercise ... your cooperation with god is calibrated to your faith in god and the goodness of his creation

NO REST IN PEACE

the elevator would go up and down and correctly stop at each floor but the outer doors wouldn't open on any floor except the first ... so each day the occupants had to come back out having failed to get to work ... and each in increasing fear that the next day on their return the doors wouldn't open on the first floor either and they'd be forced to go up and down forever ... if this did happen they reasoned they would sit upon the floor ... having first insured their load was well below capacity so they'd have room ... and the first thing they would determine was whether they should or should not appeal the eternal aspect of their confinement ... if they determined to hope and only then they would investigate the further conclusion that they did actually want to work ... did that is want to help things work in general ... that they wanted things to work forever as if to pay the fee for their hope that their separation from a meaningful existence would not be eternal ... that they would work forever instead ... continue forever to contribute to things working forever ... in heaven as well as on earth ... strange this ... their hope for doing not resting

HIS THIRD AND LAST DEFENSE

first time then space and now he felt another thing entirely as place began to change ... as if the tavern room were moving through time and space both so quickly that the room itself began to change its substance ... as they moved from place to place by way of the open wall and the narrative thread of the lawyer's story he told them tales of kings and philosophers of plain old men and ladies with the authority of sages or the wisdom of folly ... but he didn't tell one story that didn't have its motto ... or as once we used to say its moral ... and as the hours lengthened and morning drew near they must enter the dead of night and the voice of the lawyer became distant and the night of the wall exploded in battle ... fulio in a foxhole in the middle of the room cried out in despair ... on a mattress in a ward in a hypo of blue 88 ... it was better to be brave than a coward he confessed ... king jihad or crusader ... or better still was the fortitude to bear up hourly the burden and the fear for god's sake and the mission to go on ... for god's sake in the bombed-out buildings it surely had to go on ... the church in the center ... its roof open to the morning

blue 88: truth serum, named for the color of the pill and the enemy's most effective artillery

THE TAVERNMEN OF JUDGMENT

the third lawyer with the brief in his hat came striding into the room long-legged fellow that he was ... he had no clerks just a group of his friends who were themselves lawyers and one large man at least three hundred pounds who was a judge ... fulio was beginning to understand the laws of the new nature of which he found himself a part ... first the old physical laws had become elastic ... both space and time he had seen wrench in the room and in the people he met ... this time it was the table that morphed to fit the new lawyer and his friends in comfort ... though it could attain the appearance of a table of state or a bar at court most often it seemed a round table in a tavern ... or a long bench in front of the fire before which now stood the lead lawyer for this the third part of his case ... but talking not to fulio whom indeed he did not seem to notice but to his friends ... though not as one lawyer to others in summary of a case nor as one maxing an argument drawing a conclusion or supporting a line ... but rather as a man telling a story and invariably a funny one ... just then behind him ... a halo round the fire ... the wall opened out to space

LAWYER JOHN ON THE SECOND DEFENSE: THE AGENT'S RIGHT TO FORM

the lawyer looked up from the brief ... his nose which had been snub was hawklike now and there was glitter in the eye and a firm but almost smiling set to his lips as he said necessary truth form and free will should be our defense ... the pull of the first on the second is irresistible by the nature of them both ... it will be our part of the argument to defend the integrity of the third by the use of the second ... but we must move at the right moment ... we can't wait till the first swamps the second but the third can't bid on the second till we first get an agreement on terms ... the prosecution knows this and will be driving hard for just the same point ... if we make a serious misstep in this stage of the negotiations we will have lost the case before the trial begins ... we should resist any attempt of the prosecution to rush us to an agreement we are not prepared for ... in particular we must use the court's power to subpoena the testimony of reliable witnesses already on record ... it's my belief that only by their absence does the state have a case ... only if the evidence they will give is not allowed will the other evidence bury you

A SIMPLE CHOICE

in the second round of advice there was only one scribe but he had as did venusette the ability to multiform though his power seemed to concentrate itself about the face ... he came with so many books in carts that they couldn't fit in the room and stretched out into the hall and out the door beyond ... he'd refer to these often and had clerks running in and out to get the ones he wanted ... as he shifted from source to source his expression and then all his countenance would change ... sometimes ruddy cherubic other times patriarchal grey ... long faces gravened with worry or talkative impish excited ... more so as the argument developed ... what the argument was actually saying fulio had a hard time following but at the center it seemed to involve a simple choice between one thing and many ... as long as the resolution tended to the one thing the choice was indeed simple but whenever it did an about-face the number of details got out of hand until finally the scribe couldn't finish a sentence without punctuating it with three or four footnotes to reference the nuance and the query ... the nebulae of the noumena they were now forgetting

FIRST DEFENSE: INSIGNIFICANCE

men die it doesn't seem right women console them ... children die it must be wrong men avenge them ... they kill the evil they solve the problems and in between they take their pleasure ... what would you do ... suggest another story ... there is just this one ... that's why we call it humanity ... oh you can switch the casting ... send the men in one direction and the women in the other ... but the deaths and the problems to be solved are never going to end ... even as you push the time and the pleasure between them as far as they can go until the extremes become fewer and fewer ... the only ones we stop are the ones we can replace ... in fact the ones we are replacing as they cycle through ... this pack ... that tribe ... take the big group over there the one that calls itself the nation ... we have plenty where they come from ... whole bins full of civilizations ... indeed buildings full of races ... what's one species more or less that your immortal soul should care for now ... the point is the climax and the decline ... they're the ones that make the story go ... you fulio why should you be blamed when yours is so small a part to play

VENUSETTE

I was supposed to have an angel handle my defense ... yes well all our angels are busy at the moment ... what my guardian as well ... yes well something about a staff meeting ... he's sent you these writers in the meantime ... they'll brief you on our strategy ... which is ... well they'll tell you ... I'll send the first ones in ... the first one in fulio felt he remembered as having something to do with his death ... but the second one in he suddenly loathed there being nothing right about him ... they immediately moved to his flanks ... before he could respond the third entered the room and he no longer felt any concern ... she was so lovely as she moved to the place directly opposite to him ... time here she said so softly isn't like your time ... not the one you're used to ... it will actually take me years to sit down but if I choose it can take me centuries ... and the lifetimes you know I can spin through a series as I turn to sit down ... but I'll spare you the details she cooed coming closer and just give you the outline ... and she did ... suddenly tall heavy zoftik then petite arched brunette then soft blond in the sunshine ... she asked sitting down are you the one I love

vay noo set uh

THREE COMPLETE BEGINNINGS

so what would you accept as complete ... is prophetic access to divinity enough ... or wisdom surely just a little of that is a break in the usual routine ... or any virtue kindness understanding hard work ... what excellence so sharply divides itself from all the others that it must tear the last curtain from the face of reality ... split the atom ... this must have split the universe ... maybe it'll happen somewhere else some time later ... but time and space itself is torn apart in this division ... if I could find fifteen dimensions past the three or four we know I'd have to pick them up in pairs they'd be cut by this distinction ... if this division is complete ... I have a letter it belongs to a word and the word belongs to that which it signifies ... but what was the original obligation that bound the three together ... I have a thought but who can say it's mine to have or how long its truth will last ... unless the last particle in the last quadrant admits this truth ... that creation had two births and waits for a third and final ... first it began ... then one day it began all over ... and on the last day it will start forever

LET'S START WITH THE OBVIOUS

he had to be jesus then to be christ today ... modern man says isn't it lucky you just happened to be born into the one civilization among all the others on just the one planet in all the universe where god in his only begotten form chose to appear and consequently just your philosophy among all the opinions on earth is right ... how fortunate ... how unusual ... how odd ... how unlikely ... and he says this knowing the consequences ... without divine intervention all we have is divine interpretation divine inspiration ... discernment is simple prudence the pragmatic decision to go with the winner ... we call it prediction and reward those who are good at it and call them scientists ... knowers ... the universe is what it says it is ... everything ... all your religion your physics your metaphysics your convictions and your conjectures are parts of the whole and so is god ... there never is an intervention ... where would it come from ... outside everything there's nothing ... all your fables your parables and fancies are mental hijinks rolling on ether ... just the same as mine with greater or less effect ... unless there was an intervention unlike any possible other a complete break in the physical routine

FULIO'S CONTINUED STATEMENT TO COUNSEL

I am an artist but not your typical type ... so what I say about art you should leaven with the archetypical grain of salt ... no later than the first clause I'm running into trouble ... an artist makes works of art ... I agree we share for these works a particular sense of responsibility obviously so when as happens for the most part we must come to claim them if only in a word or a signature we admit as much ... but when you have me on trial for that responsibility my lawyer tells me to plead the first ... both freedom of speech and freedom of religion ... but mostly the freedom of ignorance in both ... what for instance until I did it did I know about death ... and until it happened to me I was most careful to moderate and mediate the evil influences in my life ... insisting if they must move at least let them dance ... and if they would cripple and orphan let them do it in the past under the regulations of history and narrative ... so much for war ... what then qualified me to talk of the devil or true religion destiny despotism or democracy much less wars and wars of religion ... I have only the one qualification ... I am an artist and this god help me is my art

THE SCRIVENER'S DEFENSE

it's a masterpiece it's said ... who's the master ... he immediately raises his hand to go on record ... he says it ain't me ... it isn't mine the master's peace ... I'm the master's apprentice ... I write the stuff down ... I read it ... it means as much to me as it does to you and not seldom less ... but I'm happy to have the job ... it gives me a thing to do ... and I begin to believe what it says when I hear it said just because it sounds good ... it brings a smile to my lips but not the smile you're thinking ... not all the time at least ... not if the smile you expect is one of satisfaction and not made for complicity's sake ... this one is a lie ... you know that don't you ... here the conclusion reached is vile and here the reasoning is foul but if you hit the intonation right and keep inside the rhythm it sounds as if it's right just enough so that we may take the money and close up for the night ... after all the nights do not the morning make ... the morning will bring the sorrows or the noon or the evening ... the issue is never late ... the conversation at night is never false ... it may seem unnecessary ... to be crude or blunt ... these wanderings not to your own known purpose

THE COMPANY WE KEEP

I'm thinking here's a kid whose thumb can almost bend back to his wrist he's so stubborn ... god himself looking over his shoulder to give him a hand and he says no thanks I'd rather do it myself ... grows up saying I'll do everything myself ... but says it in private talking to himself ... at least so he reasons ... in private inside his head who is there to talk to but himself ... but what does that mean talking to yourself ... if you're talking who's listening and if you're listening who's talking ... he begins to get the notion it's not so not-crowded in here any more ... there sure has been a lot of talking going on ... a bunch ... and a lot of it has been inconsistent with everything else that's been said ... who said all that stuff ... forget the long detailed discourses ... who said the short stuff like do it take it say it ... and you do and you find each time the results are incompatible with anybody's good interest forget your own ... qui bono whose good whose interest who profits ... no one ... he has inside him he discovers an instigation for a new logical category the good which is no good for anyone ... well to be honest he wants no part of such a conversation but who's beside him to help him out

FULIO'S STATEMENT ON BEING TAKEN BY THE DEFENSE

I think of you every day ... your site as it were gets a hit from me daily ... I can't get their pictures out of my mind lying there dying ... well I did think of them three times today ... twice in the last half hour ... the lord is with me wherever I go ... I feel his presence constantly ... well no not really ... logically it makes sense at least if I do my part but I can't figure out how to do that ... I don't generally think of the poor the sick the dying ... I figure some generations have to bleed themselves white in war in the course of the history of a nation ... I couldn't care less about the prison population and I pay taxes to take care of the widows and orphans ... even as I understand it some widowers ... so I don't think much of them either ... I get words mostly ... sometimes a contrived face ... but mostly words ... well to tell the truth almost words ...more a languor than a language and a longing to give these flipping ideas a name before they tumble off stage ... I should however also say I do have a knowledge in my memory of reading books of uncommon good sense ... of having knowledge that is of that good sense from which the feelings of wonder and reverence followed

PROVING THE TRINITY

I am no scholar but I want to know how we human creatures participate in eternal truth ... it doesn't seem we can arrive by pure reason at the point where revelation begins ... that god is not one only but also three ... the closest we get by reason alone ... the boldest we can be ... is to start by calling it an hypothesis ... resolving now to call it so we should begin with the evidence ... what could we expect to find if this were a true revelation ... with your indulgence I would like to start in reverse ... not with birth but with death ... not a hospital but a hospice ... doesn't matter take your pick a fifty-year old man an eight-year old boy an eighteen-year old girl ... in the building or just in the system at home ... but not by accident and not suddenly ... this death will be a process like a birth or a wedding ... anticipated arranged provided for and participated in by members of a community caring for each other as it proceeds ... there'll be machines to put in place and people to write up schedules and leave instructions ... and there'll be talk lots of it over time ... and it'll be as nothing if the patient revives and survives another twenty forty sixty years ... it's not body or mind we mean here but spirit

cf Ira Byock, Dying Well, 1997

FULIO'S LIST

this idea of talking through ... is it strong enough to buy me time ... I only mention it because of my friend fulio ... I suspect he postponed to death the big conversation he was meant to have before he died ... he knew his books wouldn't prevent his death ... he knew for example that they weren't always true some not even for the most part ... still they were good for delay ... he knew the thing about humanity was everyone in it being touched by the absolute and then being made to forget it or if remembering then to deny and he tried to do his bit for collective amnesia as well as most ... and so he read ... besides did he have any choice ... he hadn't the courage or the stamina to talk that way ... fulio was despite his learning maybe because of it a man of restricted capacity ... in any case who am I to convict him of a practice I follow myself ... so he delayed with the plausible excuse that he could not hear the word pure but must listen to it through filters ... and so he read ... he kept a punctual list of the books he read over the last decade of his life ... I have the list and look through it from time to time ... I must say he did more than delay ... he dallied ... and if truth be said trifled too ... especially early on ... it's only toward the end of the list the voice opens and whispers a shout

WHY YOU CAN'T MAKE BELIEF

this cosmic card trick as it were kept all the world running ahead of itself and trying to catch up ... being was no longer being but doing or making ... respect even self-respect had to make the same conversion ... which in turn of course made things like disability retirement and helpless dying aggravated assaults on good sense and good taste ... why don't they get with the program and take a quick step to bow out ... but it wasn't the inconvenient person who threatened to lay the concept low ... the rush to the future was made insecure not by what we might meet there but by the pull of the past ... it had after all a sensible caution ... what's your hurry it said ... can't you see the faster you run forward the more quickly you come to me ... and what am I when you've taken all the meaning and run away with it into the future ... what am I now but your present making itself past with all the meaning of the dead ... fortunately ... says the german professor ... things don't work like that ... you can't take meaning into the future and run away with it from the past ... it isn't after all something we make ... open to technique ... but a gift ... open to gratitude

THE BOOK THAT MADE A POPE

did I hear trumpets ... no but I did hear the idea of trumpets ... here's a priest in germany ... a professor in a seminary ... who writes a book the pope reads on the apostles' creed ... the pope likes the book so much he makes the priest a bishop then makes him a cardinal and then the cardinal professor becomes pope ... now the priest in his book on the credo spends forty pages on the word credo before he'll agree to get on with the creed ... and like a good professor anywhere he was right to do so ... before a philosopher can know himself before a physician can heal himself they have to define their terms ... turns out in the case of credo the definition pays a dividend of truth I was not the one to expect ... the world I knew had made the word know a fragile container and then had crammed all its hope inside ... what I hadn't caught was the obvious ... adrift on a sea of doubt and sinking mankind's solution to keep afloat was to paddle so fast into hope for the future just to keep hope inside alive it had sailed right past the shoals of theory ... right past meaning altogether ... into control of the future through technique ... a sleight of hand

Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, Ignatius Press 2004

THE SECOND VOICE

this conversation can't be a they or an it ... it can't even be an I ... it has to be a you ... first of all you includes it and they and just adds the security of knowing who you are talking to ... when you have proper discernment a sine qua non to the good life and the single characteristic you find in the enjoyment of a good book as well as one of the great hopes for life after death ... the face on the other side of the voice ... the smile behind the word ... all of which being absent I goes tumbling round its unnatural orbit down the slope I slid couldn't breathe or see and then I could but only to cry ... wasn't too long before I was taught to say you you you ... looking for you whenever I opened my eyes ... finding you in substance with my mouth my lips saying over and again your name you you you ... when have I stopped ... name the day I haven't said your name though I've long since forgotten what it means ... where could I hope to be not mouthing your name or trying to resurrect its syllable ... a cryptographer playing with an acrostic ... missing this one last sound ... rolling it over the tongue ... slipping it between the teeth ... chewing on it ... chewing ... oh what a fool ... calling it anything anything to avoid saying you you you

LIFE AFTER DEATH AND COMMON SENSE

let's take a stab at life after death ... when you die what passes ... the mind passes ... the spirit abides ... and how do I know this ... I don't know anything about it because I haven't been there and nobody's come back to tell me ... I've heard about people doing that but I haven't heard them myself ... their reports have the force of rumor only for me ... the most authoritative source I have spoke only of going there and preparing the way ... he did come back but if he spoke about what life is like there it hasn't got back to me ... so what I've got to talk about is what we all have ... common sense ... and if what I say isn't in this sense sensible then dismiss it ... now I know that we've got two parts that fail to be constant ... the body in flux waxes and wanes finally to a complete dispersal ... that's just so plain it's obvious ... the mind as you'd expect is more devious ... on the one hand it proudly claims independence from the brain and then on the other droops into amnesias and senilities and finally just can't stay awake ... no ... the only part that stays is the part that forms matter and mind ... the part that cheers us on

WHY BAD PRAYER IS NO PRAYER AT ALL

you can't say everything we do is prayer unless you immediately add the qualifiers good prayer and bad prayer ... good prayer gets past the self to other people and everything else ... the healthy that is the true trinity ... not the bad trinity me myself and a little peace and quiet away from these two ... the false inside broken trinity from which no true prayer can escape ... some parts of true prayer must be better than others but none is bad in itself ... what makes bad prayer bad then is a misnomer ... it makes prayer bad because it makes it no prayer at all ... the only bad prayer is that conversation that can't get past itself ... that remains an interior trialogue between yes and no on the one hand and please shut up on the other ... now a lot of this bad prayer no-prayer-at-all stuff is formally addressed to god ... you talk to yourself and you pretend to be god ... but after a while it's pretty obvious what you're doing and even you catch on ... the unfailing clue is unhappiness and bad temper ... you're frazzled on the inside because you've got no grace and without grace you can't be grateful and without gratitude you can't be happy

THE CRUSADE AGAINST MODERNITY

there was a pope ... papa nino was it* ... who declared a crusade ... he didn't use that word ... against modernity ... but his crusade failed and in quick succession the world got two wars and the threat of a third ... and pogroms ... civil wars in grand societies in each of which one side had no weapons ... now this I think is incontrovertible ... you would probably do better to switch our focus to the new threat of a third world war ... you might call it a war between christianity and islam but you'd be wrong ... for despite common opinion christians don't fight ... the war would be between islam and modernity ... modernity has the guns ... churches as a rule don't ... no pope or bishop or minister will give even one order to fight ... when they die in this war soldiers and civilians who are christian will inshallah die as christians ... but as soldiers and civilians they will die in a weird way as statistics ... because in modernity that's the way they live ... the ancient pagans had their gods ... modernity has only its numbers and they're all probabilities or just plain dead fact ... no ... facts too are only relatively certain ... in modernity everything is

* No, Pius X, not IX

FIRST QUESTION ON THE FINAL

there was a heretic who rejected or severely modified every dogma of the true church ... he said the lord was not the lord ... morality was expedient and fluid from time to time and place to place ... that god was god but that he was evolving ... that god was god but he was all-inclusive ... that he was god but so were we the more and the more that we acted like it ... this heretic had a wife and two children ... he was faithful to his wife and dutiful to his children teaching them the values of strength and independence ... when he turned fifty his health began to break down ... he fought his various infirmities as his doctors recommended with surgery and drugs ... it took him ten years to die but in that ten-year battle he learned how to pray ... it began as a series of attempted negotiations ... if he did such and such ... he said to no one in particular ... for say a week ... would things improve physically and emotionally socially and productively ... live or die he said ... let it go for now ... at the end of the week would he be closer in his imitation of god or would he not ... more and more of these weeks began to succeed in three of the four categories he proposed ... then he died ... was he a failure or a success

PORN DEVOTEE, HIS APOLOGY

I'm not interested in sex said its avid fan ... I'm only interested in finding Venus ... when they show porn in the dorm my eye excises the men ... when I subscribe to the porn newsletter I click girl-girl or girls home alone only ... I started liking hefty chests ... now I like small ones too ... I started by preferring brunettes but I've seen too many close blond approximations to the one I'm looking for to take that preference as binding without qualification ... in two words paleness and flatness I've come to see the enticement of abstraction ... the dark the latin the asian bring the shadows that give substance and curve to the representation ... a single strand of their hair shows what I mean ... if you take the snow caucasian's hair take it from the brow and make it so light it's a triumph over the dark and gravity too so that you have only the hint of seeing it at all ... elevate your vision above the other four senses ... then find that hairbreath's distance in between what you see and what you can't ... there on the edge of glaucoma you'll find the goddess ... she has no color in the fog ... you might as well be in the dark but for all the light

THE PROOF OF GOD'S EXISTENCE

the trouble today with evil is that most people don't spell it with a d ... why is old nick so persistent in taking his name out of circulation ... as if self-imposed he was a nonperson in a totalitarian state ... I expect he does because he is ... or more to the point most of all wants to be ... a nonperson in a metaphysical state for which he alone is the justification ... but all the time undermining his desire is the knowledge that other things work ... which knowledge in all creatures has the same effect ... which is wonder ... here I am a self-contained world of thought ... he must think ... how the hell can these other things work ... forget that they exist ... they work ... the night follows the day and the sun rises ... I call your name and you respond ... each morning I wake up and I start again to thinking ... you promise to return and five decades later you do ... if A then B ... A and sure enough there's B ... more startling still A is A ... it really is ... even in the midst of the most beclouded declamatory wicked mind there's a look in the eye that makes us smile ... an agreement past reconciliation ... a shared knowledge that things work because they're good and were meant to be

THE CONSTANT DEGRADATION OF THE DEAD

which of the lessons of death is the one to be learned most and forgotten last just before immortality ... my vote is for indignity ... without indignity any death would be just another express stop on the local line with who knows how many others to follow ... without indignity death could be managed demoted from an angel to an event ... but by accident or long process death will leave a corpse ... a putrefaction bag with an open mouth ... please do someone close the mouth ... indignity means shame but not acculturated shame ... guilt is the cause of this shame ... that no matter whatever we did or can say we are complicit in this event ... you can see it on the face ... the spreading horror of that shame ... it's why we cover the face ... the shame on it embarrasses us ... the pitiful shame of the dead ... it's a debt we cannot satisfy while we still live ... a debt that consciousness is always conscious it cannot pay and makes of conscience herself a debtor always living beyond her means until in the end they have so consumed her that she must stay behind for derision's sake ... swallowing both earth and light till she dulls them both in the constant mire of her shame ... oh but if she could just turn away

THE MASTER DEPARTS

the old man ... a child of that rebellious and seminal decade in our nation's history ... now these many years later on the edge of his death ... said there were three things he could remember of his time on earth and they were each a part of our broken reflection of god ... the first was sex a mimicry a parrotry of creative power ... the second was war our ancient right to claim morality ... and the third a distant third his people's love of knowledge ... after we buried him and went our separate ways I retired to dinner and a coffee by the table in remembrance of my old friend ... in age he had become if not bitter a bit sardonic ... that part about sex being a cheap imitation rather than a participation in the creative power for example ... I knew he didn't really mean that ... and for him a practical pacifist a perennial professional civilian to give war a claim to morality ... well what was that but moral cowardice ... unless we could say here as well he was being ironic ... the real spirit of my dead friend was revealed only in what he said last ... for he was always a patron of books ... my dead scholar friend yufoolio

HOW THE IMAGE LOVES THE THOUGHT

there are two kinds of persons ... the imaginative and the intellectual ... the imaginative is a solitary spinning out yarns in color ... the intellectual is a herd'sman following the boundaries of necessity and absolute truth ... yes yes with this qualification and that ... but bound by necessity and absolute truth in the end ... imagination takes the herd'sman's conclusions as sometimes well-intentioned advice to help bide the time in the waiting room ... but it's the room he abides not the advice ... the fox in the fold the herdsman's wolf is always probability ... snot-nosed kid brother to necessity the real killer of contradictions ... probability for-the-most-part-backtracking-certainty just young and brash enough to queer the whole soup up ... doesn't bother the atticmen ... what do they care for in their garret chairs ... only the melody of the lines or the last sad whispers of color before night ... there was always the touch of the finger inside the elbow ... time's smile because it was dying ... blood pushing straining to gets its work done before dark so that each day might end in a one word tribute to thought