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A particular chunk of asphalt, in the crotch of the curb and the road, partway across a bridge over the Ventura Highway. It is a marker of the moment -- it is the moment -- the bridge is forgotten, the time of day, the weather conditions, the ride to the nearby ramp, the emotional state, these are gone as well. The present state of the chunk? Unknown and inconsequential.

in the crotch

Teatrain is not asleep and not awake.

He thinks for a moment it is raining, but it is not. The piano and storm of the Who's Love Reign o'er Me reign over him, and he approaches consciousness in a sweet melancholia.

Teatrain That smell. Still there. Cannot be my imagination. Teatrain heads down the aqua

blue hallway, through the livingroom to the kitchen. It's here. I know the smell is here. The kitchen is yellowed by the light, the late morning light, the wainscoting looks gold and the chocolate brown of the shelving is, well, chocolate brown.

__ Hi, Tee, says Evan, packing a knapsack, readying to leave.

__ Do you smell something?

__ No, I don't. I thought we covered that matter pretty extensively yesterday.

__ Don't give me shit about it. I know I smell something.

__ Okay, you smell something. What do you smell?

__ Same thing I smelled yesterday. Something gone bad.

__ Like what?

__ Like something gone bad. I don't know what.

__ Well, I've got to go. Let me know if you find whatever it is that you're looking for.

__ It's not a goddamn quest. I'm telling you something stinks.

They were both smiling now, indulgent friends.

__ Well I'm sorry I can't help you look today, I really had a lot of fun looking for it yesterday. But I've got to get going.

__ You really don't smell it?

__ No, I really don't smell it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that you don't smell it. After all we live in separate realities, don't we?

__ Go do whatever you've got to do. I'll find it and put it in your bed, Okay?

__ Fine by me. I can't smell it, remember?

__ Fuck you. And have a nice day.

__ You as well. Catch you later.

Evan shouldered his backpack and left the kitchen, whistling like a bird. It smells sort of like garbage, but not quite, thought Teatrain. Now he opens the refrigerator for the thirtieth time, thinking that the best possibility is that the dread smell emanates from within. He still smells the smell, but there is no appreciable difference in the strength of the scent. He surmises, just as he did the day before, that the source is not in the refrigerator. He sniffs the garbage pail next to the fridge, it's not exactly a rose bouquet, but there is nothing particularly insulting about it. He hadn't expected anything, yesterday he emptied the garbage and cleaned the pail with soap and disinfectant. Now it smelled mostly like plastic and soap. He sniffed around the pantry, near the sink. The dishes were all clean -- he had done them yesterday as well. But the smell remained, no doubt about it. Not overwhelming, but everywhere. Perhaps, he thought, it is just the stench of the decay of my life. But while he enjoyed his figure he didn't believe it. He smelled something real and disgusting, not something cerebral and poetic.

Back to the refrigerator. There didn't seem to be any other choice. He began to empty the refrigerator, taking the items out one by one, sniffing them, then placing them on the table. He had done exactly the same thing the day before, but the only possibility he could think of was that he had somehow missed the offender. He was halfway through the condiments on shelf of the door when a heavyset twenty-five-year-old woman came into the room. A multicolored scarf from Pakistan kept her red hair from her face.

__ Hi Tee.

__ Morning, Carrie.

__ What are you doing?

__ Do you smell something?

__ No. What do you mean?

She was looking at him inquisitively, as if there had to be more to the question than there appeared to be.

__ Do you smell something gone bad, you know, a foul smell?

Carrie sniffed about, a bit too dramatically for Teatrain. But then again she was sniffing, at least pretending to take him seriously.

__ No, I don't. I really don't.

She stopped sniffing and looked at him.

__ Well, I do.

With this he returned to the refrigerator, passing items hand to nose to hand to table. Carrie had intended to fix herself something to eat, but she changed her mind in the face of his efforts -- it wasn't that big a table. Besides, she had something she wanted to discuss.

__ The phone bill is overdue. So is the gas. So is the electricity.

__ The bills are overdue, murmured Teatrain.

__ What?

__ You were saying that the bills are overdue.

__ Yes.

__ And?

__ Well, don't you think we ought to pay them a little more regularly? Of course they're in your name so it's up to you ... but one of these days they're going to shut something off and then it's going to be everybody's problem.

__ They already have.

__ What?

__ Before you and Timmy moved in. They shut off the phone for a couple weeks. It was kind of nice.

__ Well it wouldn't be nice if they shut off the electricity or gas. We wouldn't have heat or light. And besides you use the phone more than anyone else, I think.

By now he had moved onto the main shelves. Out came the orange juice, then the milk, then some seltzer water. He sniffed everything, even the seltzer water.

__ What do you want, Carrie?

__ Well, I just thought we ought to pay the bills on time. It seems like the right thing to do.

__ Do you want to take care of the bills?

__ Well I didn't that I ... I didn't mean to say that you weren't doing a good job or anything like that ... I ...

__ That's exactly what you meant to say. And it's true. I'm doing a lousy job with the bills. Do you want to take care of them?

__ Well, I ...

__ Fine, you're hired.

__ Well if it's okay with everybody.

__ I assure you it's okay with everybody.

He was down on his haunches, at the produce drawer. He sniffed the celery as he took it out. It smelled fine. On the other hand it felt a little rubbery so he threw it away. Carrie watched him as he placed the fruit on the table.

__ Well okay then, she finally said.

__ Okay.

She picked up the bills from the corner of the table and walked into the livingroom. The refrigerator was completely empty now. He opened the freezer and found what he expected -- there were only ice cube trays inside. Taking no chances he sniffed each of these. Then he released the cubes into the sink, and washed the trays with soap and hot water. He refilled them with cold water and returned them to the freezer. He stood in front of the open refrigerator. He considered, and then commenced sponging it down, filling a pot with hot water and ammonia cleaner. Then he replaced the food, sniffing again as each item passed through his hands. When he finished he had to conclude that the smell did not come from the refrigerator.

But it came from somewhere. It was as strong as it had ever been, perhaps even stronger now. He went into the back hall, sniffing. He opened the door to the back hallway sniffing. He returned to center kitchen, sniffing. He closed his eyes, trying to triangulate with his nose. He walked slowly back into the kitchen, following the scent. For a moment he imagined himself a bloodhound, he chuckled, and it ruined his concentration. He froze and began again. He moved toward the pantry, convinced that he was on the trail. Standing in the pantry he was sure that he getting close. He opened his eyes wide. He thought he had checked everything in the pantry the day before. There wasn't much. Four cereal boxes, some pasta, a few cans. He checked each of these, moving them to opposite sides of the shelves as they passed his nose. The source was nearer.

He began to pick up the pots and pans on the upper shelves, one by one. They were empty and smelled only of metal, if at all. He came to a large aluminum pot with a cover. He took it down, lifted the lid, and took a whiff. His stomach contracted in a spasm, he dry-heaved. His eyes watered and stung. He wretched again. He looked into the pot and saw a remarkable collage of gray webbing and what appeared to be red and brown moss. To his regret he took another breath through his nose. The stench was overpowering. He held the pot in front of him, gingerly, and made his way out to the back porch. He placed the pot in the far corner, and escaped to the livingroom to let his stomach rest.

He

Last night or this morning I dreamt that

I was watching an infinitely long (or at least unending to my view) marching column of propositions. Each line in the column was a separate proposition. At first the propositions were in words, in English, but I could not exactly read them. They were blurry in the way only things in dreams can be blurry, a blurriness that doesn't bother you the way it would in conscious life.

There was one word in each proposition that stood out, it seemed to be italicized, except that in this case the italicization meant that the letters were slanted every-which-way, like they are when one is trying to write very fast. I wasn't able to read any of these words either, or if I was, I don't remember any of them. But I do recall a sense that these words were the keys to the propositions, and that they were words that required much work to find their proper context. These words, as I recall, were never the same in any two of the propositions. I have the feeling that I didn't have enough time with the column to discover anything about it, past this simple description.

Towards the end of the dream the symbols changed from words and letters to logical notation, or perhaps to numbers and mathematical notation, I can't remember.

The most important part of the dream was that I had a definite purpose in the situation. I was supposed to find meaning in the propositions. I was aware that all the propositions were true, my problem was to find meaning among this infinite number of truths. The italicized words were supposed to help me somehow. I was just getting to work on the proposition, starting to read them as they marched by perfectly in step, when I woke up.

Last night or

Neil is mopping the floor,

as someone does every morning. He is doing a good job, with plenty of hot water and soap. But the effort could no more exorcize the spirit of the floor than a Negro mother could whiten her boys face with a washcloth. Outdoor grime, indoor spit, five complete pint drafts, spillings from innumerable other pints, a zodiac of hard liquor drinks, sticky mixers, drips of piss (in the men's room), bits of Chicago pizza from next door, bits of sandwiches from behind the bar, chips from down the street, broken glass, coinage, currency, newspaper, flyers, books, odd pieces of paper from pads and notebooks, gum wrappers, cigarette packs, cigarette stubs, pocket lint, hair, fingernails, all this and more dropped in a night, leaving an indelible if microscopic record of a time, a bar, its people.

flyers

travel flyers

most exciting part of the

journey is it not ... you know well the quality that Falling's is famous for. So sit back and enjoy yourselves. I assure you that you are in for a journey quite unlike any you have had before.

As we get started I'd just like to mention a couple things that will let the trip run more smoothly for us and be more enjoyable for you. The machines, of course, are all tied to the guide as we begin, so that we may all travel together. Upon arrival the situation will be clear, and I will provide an outline of our location along with an overview of what to expect at that particular place. After the introduction is completed, the individual override becomes operational, so you may leave the group then to do your own exploring. There are line nets so that you may venture out with a friend or a group you came with, or perhaps a close friend you just met. Just enter the hookup as the machine explains. You can choose a leader or it can be set up to take direction democratically.

You should watch for the blue light in the atmosphere. That is the signal that the group is soon to move on. When you see the light you should return to the most recent starting point. You can do this manually as long as you have remained in the local area -- which, by the way, is something we urge you to do: our tours are designed to give you the most interesting experience available in every locale we visit. The other option is to merely switch on the tracer, which will automatically bring you back to our gathering point. It has been programmed to bring you to the appropriate gathering point for every location on the tour, so you can also use it to find us if you get lost. One of our people will remain at the gathering point for the duration of our stay in an area. Don't hesitate to ask if you any assistance whatsoever, that's what we're here for.

Please be prompt when you see the light. We will not leave a sector unless we have everyone with us, so if you dally you will be holding up the whole group, which would be quite impolite, wouldn't it? There are tethers to all of you, and if you do not return for some reason we will come find you. But please do not make us do that if it can possibly be avoided. It takes extra time, and we may have to sacrifice some latter part of the tour to make up the time, a thing nobody wants to have happen.

That's all in the way of directions, no more schoolmasterly jabbering from me. Again, welcome to Falling's Tours. I know you are in for the time of your lives.

all tied to the guide

spits a couple times

Seaman First Class MacNamara spotted

a last bit of puke on his sneaker and made his way over to a poor excuse for a patch of lawn on the Atlantic Ave. side of Waterfront Park. He managed to leave the offending item on a dandelion, went up the ramp through the bare grape arbor, crossed a much better piece of lawn, and came to a standstill on the cobblestone walkway that bordered the water. He could see the ship from where he stood, but then he could see the ship from anywhere. She had burnt a hole behind his eyes.

He turned his gaze to the restaurants and offices on the piers and shore. Nice place at lunch, he thought, lots of secretaries. But at six a.m. there wasn't even a stray dog or a fat waterfront rat to be seen.

Mac took stock. He was hungry and almost out of cigarettes. He had noticed that the Christy's over by the aquarium was open when he was crossing Atlantic Ave.

Christy's was flouro lit so that the contrasts jumped right at you. Still the overall effect was a few million watts short of the average supermarket. Cool neon told you where to look for things that weren't there, for the most part, or so it seemed to Mac. There weren't any chocolate covered mini donuts, the pretzel logs were gone, and the whole Hostess rack was empty, excepting a lone vanilla pudding pie whose hull appeared to be compromised. Mac cruised the aisles slowly, looking for something he thought he could get down and keep down. Presently he forgot he was looking for food and began considering the vagaries of packaging. This led him naturally to the cleaning products, available here only in small portions. But the littleness seemed to amplify the intensity of their colorations. Mac caught himself mid reverie and glanced about the store, checking for signs that his continued presence and seeming lack of purpose might become a problem.

There were none. The store was busy, it seemed, for the hour of the day. There were three security guards in the aisles. None of them were on duty at the store, they were likely from the office buildings in the area. They would purchase coffee and snacks, which would be placed in little burnt orange fold up boxes for transport. One of the guards was white, defiant stubble, veins you could climb on his nose. A classic drunk Irishman. Mac had seen him in the most unlikely of places, and of course here, the most likely. The other two were Nigerians, Mac guessed, noting that they were speaking to each other in a foreign language, though their uniforms were from different security companies. Mac worked once, for about a month, as a security guard. He relieved a Nigerian, a nice enough fellow who did the overnight and went to Northeastern during the day. He told Mac interesting stories about life back home. Unfortunately the man smelled truly horrible and Mac quit partly because he could not face the accumulated stench in the small office they shared.

Through the plate glass windows Mac watched the Frito-Lay truck pull up. The driver, in uniform, hopped through the open door and came into the store to take a quick look at the shelves. He returned to the truck for stock and a two-wheeler. Meanwhile the Coke man showed, and then in a minute or two the Wise Potato Chips rep followed. Mac, leaning on a freezer case, smiled at the convergence. Food for the needy. Mac settled for freshness if he couldn't have perfection. He went with sour cream and onion chips, a coke, and threw in a brownie for good measure.

Only one register was, the other was grinding out the nights sales (a staggering litany of pecuniary arrangements -- the paper ribbon seemed to be easily filling the large box behind the counter). One clerk was doing something with a calculator and a clipboard. The other, a woman in her middle twenties in a yellow sweatshirt dress, not unpleasant to perceive, was joking with the Frito-Lay hombre. Mac was in no hurry, so he put stuff on the counter and turned back to face the aisles, as if the racks and refrigerators and linoleum were the best show in town.

The lady in yellow eventually approached him. She smiled as if he hadn't been standing there for a bit and knowing that she knew it.

__ Is that all, she said.

As if people always buy this kind of junk at this time of the morning, thought Mac. Of course to her it must seem that that's exactly what people do. Mac nods and takes a look at his left flank. He spots a yuppie checking dates on endive dip, finding nothing this side of the full moon. The yuppie instinctively holds a nostril and gives a snort, apparently on a supply run for a continuing scene. He gives up on the endive, shuffles over a step and grabs the last pint of sour cream. (ironically, the dairy man has yet to appear). Then he heads for an aisle, probably looking for the soup mix that doubles as dip spice. Mac considers hustling him for an invite, but lets it go. Instead he reaches for his last bill, a fin, and pays the lady.

__ Have a nice day, she says.

__ I'll do my best.

With this he hits the double doors and is out in a day that has got on considerably since he's been gone.

Mac's got a walk ahead of him, so he starts out full stride, popping the chip bag and unwrapping the brownie on the fly. A couple cabs were on the street, empty. Otherwise, nothing. He struck out for Southie, munching while he walked. The aluminum of the Federal Reserve Building gleamed in the early morning sun. He walked across the plaza to the revolving doors in the middle bottom of the glass wall. Locked. A guard came over, hearing the doors tried and seeing the unshaven seaman. Mac pointed to the lobby and requested a lookabout. The guard just shook his head. No.

With the brownie gone, the coke still a third full, Mac is taking Canal St. with an even beat. In a few minutes he is passing in front of the entrance to the yard. There are two MP's at the gate, turning away a station wagon full of carousers who want a look at the ship. The MP's inform them of the tour hours, and they make a major fucking production out of turning service time into civ time. Mac walks on by. Turning in never occurs to him, so he is not confused and sees no reason to ask himself why. One quiet homunculus inside pulling the levers.

Mac walks on by.

Tom Dickie. He was far from the largest of the ninth grade boys, but he was

easily the most feared. He was also, most likely, the most respected, excepting perhaps a quarterback of Armenian origin who seemed to have the natural ability to do absolutely anything. The track system in the schools had steered T.D. (as he was called) into the lowest level in nearly every subject. His various guidance counselors felt he was not performing to his potential. His teachers felt that he was achieving his potential and then some, unfortunately in endeavors generally considered inimical to the orderly conduction of a school day at Harding Junior High.

T.D.'s chief nemesis was a teacher and vice principal by the name of Mr. Shornham. Shornham seemed old and large at the time, but now we know him to have been about thirty-five and no taller than five ten, and no heavier than one-eighty. Still he far outsized T.D., and there frequently occurred situations wherein this advantage was brought to bear. They had yet to exchange blows, but there had been more that one tense confrontation in the halls. T.D. had twice roughly pushed Mr. S.'s hand off his shoulder.

It was a relatively warm November day, but a damp one, as warm fall days always seem to be. The cement stairs, balustrades, and walls that served as benches were cold to the ass, with the consequence that time spent hanging out was passed with a restlessness and a sore wish for something to do. Cigarettes were smoked with a sense of duty as opposed to a sense of defiance or careless immersion.

Inside, students wore their jackets to class. Last period found T.D. in Mr S.'s history class. A particularly abusive Mr S. this day, the result both of his shortened patience and T.D.'s concentrated boredom. By three o'clock Mr.S had chastised T.D. several times and directed him to remain after class. When the bell rang T.D. left through the back door. He didn't sneak out, but nor did Mr. S see him leave -- the teacher had his head down, preparing himself for their discussion. Mr S. slammed his hand down as he picked his head up, only to see that his theatrics were lost on an empty classroom.

Quite angry now, Mr S. picked up his things, dumped them into his locker in the teacher’s room, and headed out to his car. On the wall along the drive sat T.D. and several of his friends and admirers. Mr S. approached them with an easy stride, a smile on his face. Through the smile he said:

__ T.D., you're scum. You bully and you threaten a lot of kids younger and smaller than yourself. Real tough guy. You'll never have what it takes to be a worthwhile adult. You're a waste of everybody's time. I don't know why you keep coming to school.

Then to the rest of the group he said:

__ You think this punk is something. He's not. He's nothing. You'll realize that sooner or later. I hope for your sakes it's sooner.

To some of those on the wall, T.D.'s move had the elegance of Astaire, the class of Dean, the courage of Brando, though it was, of course, quintessentially T.D. He removed his jacket, held it by the collar, and purposefully, perfectly and delicately folded it. First the long way, a crease in the back to match the zipper in the front, then in half just above the pockets, then he placed the neat package on the wall, slipping his hands out from underneath. Then he turned and hit Mr. S. so hard in the mouth that he knocked him down and cut his lip. T.D. made no move toward Mr. S. while he was down. Everybody on the wall looked on, stunned. Mr. S. got up, slowly, staring at T.D. He approached T.D., got right up close, too close to swing, and then all of a sudden grabbed his shirt and bent the boy back over the wall. He slapped him around a little while he held him there. What he was doing was more insulting than it was painful. Then T.D. landed another right. It didn't much kick to it because he couldn't get his weight behind it given the position he was being held in. But it made Mr. S. lose his grip, and freed T.D.

Mr. s. closed his hands and went to work. T.D. blocked the first few, and stuck him a couple times, cutting the lip even more. But he couldn't stop him. Mr. S. just kept on swinging, and the punches started to land. T.D. was caught between Mr. S. and the wall and the spectators on the sides. He probably could have worked his way out, but it wasn't his style. Too stubborn to give in but not strong enough to win, he got the shit kicked out of him. Mr. S. didn't stop until TD offered no resistance at all. Mr. S., his mouth bloody, his knuckles scuffed, his shirt ripped, got into his station wagon and drove away. Not a glance or a word for those that had watched. They hung around, not one offering assistance to T.D. He sat on the asphalt, back against the wall, resting until his head cleared and his pain became identifiable. It came from his eye, his lip, his ribs, his right hand, he had a crushing headache and thought he might throw up at any time. His right eye was rapidly closing. He rose, it took everything he had to keep it steady, but steady he was, and he too left the schoolyard without a word.

He had made my life miserable once or twice, but I felt sorry for him anyway as we watched him walk away.

word for those

The city changes quickly from concrete to clapboard.

Concrete block here and there. The big ole Edison plant. Blood of the wire. You can see all those Sears fans, every house in Southie has an electric fan from Sears, all powered from here. The fuel ports, insect looking things, aren't they Yet another gate and another security guard. From the top of the hill you can see the bay, just a bit, through the trees in the park. Up Day Blvd to the fort.

Castle Island is hopping for this time in the morning. Sweeny's is setting up, already selling o.j. to the fisherman. As he crosses the parking lot, Mac realizes that he has been circling the ship. There are fisherman and dog shitters everywhere. There's a fellow in a teal blue sedan, police radio blaring, aluminum crutches with white cuffs for the forearms in the back seat. Polio? Fat man in a full green lime suit walks a little rat dog, no, there's two of them. His hair is super short, fancy, but he's probably not an active faggot -- couldn't find himself for himself anyways.

Mac starts out on the walk. You'd think that everyone in Southie is up at seven am and is at Castle Island. The fort is a citadel, a word Mac likes, and he notes that in a billion year youth he never made it inside the fucker. The fishing pier hangs out over the harbor -- rocks slick with green underneath -- gray steel rails -- rods sticking out like antennae. They're stringing these fish along. There's a guy, looks familiar, Sox hat and Prince playing fucking LOUD that time of the morning, 1999 going out over the water. But no-one complains. Maybe it's cuz he's the only one with fish, two big blues. They're stiff now, lying on the pier in soft curves. Their scales catch a little morning sun and spit back a last shimmer. (Echoes of a well-dressed youth -- we ran in school but damn if we didn't shine. Fast, boy we were fast, cut through mackerel like they swam still). Fuckers got some teeth, they do. Hit a rod, don't they, give you a fight. When they run the water is black with them and the tailfins cut the surface like mini sharks. You can catch a fish by hitting them on the back with the lure.

In some places the water meets the land uneasily, like fighters before the bell. In some spots the fight is on. And in some spots they meet amicably, with respect and knowledge of each other, like grown up siblings who have grown to like each other. Here it's the last, the stone walls seem to enjoy the bath. In between songs on the Prince tape whispers of the police radio can be heard even out here. Mac chuckles to himself, wondering if the airwaves carry any news of his activities last night.

The sun warms and the crowd grows. People are wandering now, most without dogs or fishing rods. They seem to be waiting for something. Then it comes to him. They are waiting with him, waiting to watch his ship leave port.

On the fishing dock they are pointing. People are moving to the rail of the walk or up the hill to the fort walls. Her bow comes out now from behind the warehouse of the container shipyard. She moves steadily forward, cleaving the harbor, moving as if she were on rails underneath, or as if the land itself was rearranging about her. She was magnificent, there is no other word. The flight deck was lined with men in dress whites. Mac didn't try to distinguish individuals, they were all his shipmates. Or perhaps now his ex-shipmates. He was in trouble, he thought.

Mac cries a little, just a little, hardly more than a dampness in the corners of his eyes. There is so much in this day. Mothers and fathers and children, kids on bikes, babies in strollers, the granite of the fort the wood of the bench the green water, the pleasure craft in the harbor, looking like toys, the jets at Logan, they're big insects crawling on the tarmac and droning overhead, and his ship, gray mother, heading out to see, sea.

the green water,

Crazy fish, swims past the lures, jerking like an

epileptic mackerel, by the creosote pilings, past the dark hulls, following the warm water now, past the cement piers, around the corner, past the North End, under the Charlestown Bridge, up to the lock, up through the sluice, this is hard work in reverse now, up that short ugly channel to the next step at the Museum of Science, then suddenly out into the wide expanse, lazy eddies, then upstream, under the Longfellow, past sailboats and joggers and bicyclists on the left and right, now under the Mass Ave bridge, past the pyramid hotel, bending to the right, now under the railroad bridge, which is under the B.U. bridge, now past the soccer players, the softball players, on the right, the Mass Pike elevated to the left, now around the bend back to the left, under the footbridge, then suddenly drifts into the air, spinning, and buffets up to the walkway, to the hand of a man just finishing his coffee.

the footbridge

The bell rang thrice before a pensive Teatrain let go of the rail,

turned, and started down the slight slope of the north half of the bridge toward the square. At the bottom he found Memorial Drive too busy to be crossed against the light. He looked to the east, past the boathouse to the bend in the river. He calculated, multiplying the speed of the river times the time elapsed since he stood at the crest of the bridge, and guessed that his spittle had just drawn abreast of the first elm beyond the boathouse.

With the change of the light he crossed the road and stepped onto the brick sidewalk, heading north still. Five minutes to the train, he thought, five minutes to the next stop, then five minutes from there.

He decided on tabooli before reaching the blue van. He received his cylindrical sandwich, and a cookie, and slipped them into opposite pockets. He paid with a twenty and walked away, forgetting his change. The vendor called him back.

__ Expensive sandwich, said the Arab-American, laughing.

There is no mistaking a classroom. Martian classrooms probably look the same. Think of all the others who have been here, or will be here. The blackboard is never quite a clean slate, there is always the pentimento. How much time spent in classrooms? The thought is exhausting.

__ The results are in a paper in JSL, in seventy-eight.

He spoke though a beard and moustache, his lips moved slowly. Long legs and arms. A bulging briefcase lay on the fronttable, books and photocopies spewing from its open mouth. Impolitic to eat during the talk? Probably. Teatrain tested the hypothesis. The stiff paper crackled loudly as he unwrapped the sandwich. Professor X in the front row swiveled at the noise, his damning eyes magnified by thick glasses provided data. To Teatrain's right Su-Yin whispered:

__ Eating during seminar is frowned upon.

She was smiling as Teatrain turned to verify his source. He returned the smile. He licked his fingers after swallowing his first and only bite. Then he rolled the tube back inside its paper coat. Crackle, crackle, crackle.

I am melting. What would it be like to lose it completely at this moment in time? To have the framework crumble and I, I fall through. If I could just once, once only, make a moment they would remember. A glitch in the transmission, a bug in the program. To focus all surrounding energies, for a quartered second, on my dilemma. It would have to be something so outrageous that they could not possibly deny it or explain it away. Was this what Mishima had in mind? No. I am nowhere near that selfless. It is not for the greater good that I want to stick a stick in the wheel. It is for my own cheap fame. Could there be a story of me so horrible that they would have to tell it continually? One that plays three shows daily in the theater of their minds? This is truly parasitic thought. I could scream I could cry I could shit piss or die.

__ In this first part we will not be giving Q an interpretation ...

Teatrain forced himself to concentrate on what was being said, succeeding for almost twenty minutes. Professor Y interrupted the speaker for what seemed like the hundredth time in ten minutes. Teatrain shared his sentiments, as the talk was sketchy and lacked even hints about the proofs, but he objected to the methodical harassment. When Professor Y let up his student y took over. Tag team mathematics.

Teatrain began observing dustspecks floating in the rhomboid of direct sunlight. Nice windows, he thought. I've been doing this in classrooms for as long as I can remember. Reminds me of a prison cell. There was the story of a mathematician in prison in some tenth world shithole. They give him toilet paper, but he has no ink or pen. So he uses his blood and a fingernail. Do I care that much? Of course what else would there be to do? The blood and guts of academics. My new theme.

__ In the second hour I will outline a proof of the main result. Let's take a ten-minute break.

Teatrain lazily rose and went onto the hall to eat without violating protocol. Su followed him out the door, walking past him as he stopped to lean against a spot of bare wall. She smiled again as she returned from the water fountain.

__ Smells delicious.

Teatrain quicknodded in response.

__ Not much of a talk, is it? Hope the second hour is better.

With this she was back through the door. Nice shape.

Halfway through the second hour Teatrain sat still, bored. His notepad held some examples of his latest diversion: random logic. The usual truth tables were drawn, but the values were given in each case by a flip of a coin. What is the likelihood of consistency? Cognizant of the need for decorum, he had at first spun the coin on his notepad. But he found this unsatisfying. He felt he had no choice but to flip the coin, flicking it into the air with thumb and forefinger, catching it in the palm of the flicking hand, then turning it over onto the back of the other hand. Quizzical looks immediately became disapproving stares. Teatrain put the penny in his pocket and pouted.

Seated in the back row, near the door to the adjoining classroom, if he listened closely he could almost decipher the murmur of the lecture in the next room. Then the seminar speaker paused for a moment to erase the blackboard, and he made out a reference to Joyce and Phoenix Park. Without thinking Teatrain got up and walked through the door into the next classroom.

classroom

Teacher is still speaking but Henri has already checked into the machine.

Of course this is not strictly by the rules, since they are not licensed until the teacher nods his head. But this is nothing new to Henri, who has been on the machine since he was a child. Where he grew up, machines were not so plentiful, but neither was their use so closely monitored. The machine room was always left open, as was everything in that small town. Henri had, of course, been to the machine with his parents, like any child, but unlike most children he had the rudimentaries down by his third or fifth trip. The next chance he got he was on his own. So as the teacher droned on and on, Henri headed for a place he had been many times before.

a place he

In the protected area a

had been

young man sits by the side of the road and thinks, it is a cerebral time. He looks up the road, northwest, then southeast, and wonders if it is a necessary fact that another car must travel this road before he dies of thirst, starvation, or perhaps rattlesnake bite. He is not really worried though, he is only curious. He could be watching the miles of road he can see, and the desert horizon, remarkable as it is, with that ominous cloud to the west. But he isn't. He concentrates on a couple square feet of pavement at the end of his legs, just beyond his feet. He realizes he doesn't know how asphalt is manufactured.

But he is Zen at this moment and is interested in being not origins. He wonders if he took the few hours or days or years he is apparently to have at this spot, well, if he worked hard at it, could he really know this spot? Could this place become something he would carry? A mind print permanent?

if he took the few hours

It might have been merry old England, and it might have been three hundred years earlier,

and our subjects might have been people who would have prided themselves on knowing the vegetations and animal forms they were likely to encounter or see traces of. We say it might have been because it takes a good eye to distinguish this land from the lake country. There are the harvested hayfields and gentle wagon paths through the woods. Dragonflies flit the water. The lake is still, green, reflective in the coves and corners, wind rippled and blue out in the open. It could be one of a thousand journeys to that time and place. A visit to the poets. To hear their natural art, an art so famous that at times it seems that every written sentence bears their motif. (Well, a reference if not an example). A remarkable time, when poetry was on Everyman's lips. It was an art not paid and schooled for. An art of awakening man, the cloudiness of sleep softening the edges. Later in the day he would not make such a beautiful picture, he would be weary and complacent, he would see himself only as part of a common destiny, an obvious destiny, a destiny that was his only because he happened to be there.

It might have been, but it wasn't. It was ten-thirty Sunday morning. Voices can be heard coming over the knoll along the path. The birds sing and the hay sways in a gentle breeze, and the sun is preparing for a warm June afternoon. There is a castle in the distance, beyond where the road cuts the branch of wood that serves as the border between this field and the hayfield next. The voices are distinguishable now, discussing their packed lunch and the quality of certain picnicking spots. They are carrying a radio, which is off for the moment, and they are dressed in a fashion that would have got them arrested in old England. But this is New England, a few hundred years later. The castle and fields are a state park, the remnants of a feudal town, where the democratic duke owned the factories that made the shovels that dug the Panama canal. Before that the factories made the plow that plowed the furrows that fed the duke the peasants and the livestock. The plows were famous the world over, riding the wave of American economic will during the expansion era.

Good plows they were too, not cheap. And those shovels for the canal were first class sold at a first class price. And so the flat field over there was once a landing strip, where the scion of the duke could float in his little plane and park it at the back door of the castle, taking lunch by the lake. Excepting those that worked on the estates (in the later years several of these castles appeared as the leading family grew), townspeople were not to be seen on these lands. But now the children of the children, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the peasants, come to the estate not because they work here but because they own it. They own it in the same sense as they employ the ranger, the town manager, the congressman, the senator, and the president. The four we have been following so far are such descendents. It appears to them that it will be a good day in the sun, that the lake will be refreshing to swim in, that all in all the day will be perfectly used. They are two couples, one recently married, while for the other the likelihood of marriage doubles every couple months or so.

They pick a spot and settle, spreading blankets and turning on the radio. The ranger is by early, reminding them that swimming in the lake is prohibited. It is a well known warning, one that will be ignored several times that afternoon. The origins of the rule seem to be legal or political, it lacks the moral force needed to keep hot individuals from a cool lake.

They pick a spot

These are primitives, in the sense that they do not have the machine,

though of course they have much of the raw technical ability we have come to associate with primitives of this sector. They are, at this moment, at this place, relatively happy. They live, for this day, without time or concern for larger matters. It is an entirely intrinsic way of thinking, one might suppose, where the qualities of ones world are not thought of as the result of an external construction, but are rather merely reflective of the natural order of things. A sandwich is a sandwich, not merely, but entirely, and the sandwich is good or not depending, one might say, only on its taste and nutritional value.

the machine

Today the sandwiches are good, the lake is clear,

the sun is warm. There is shade under the trees near the waters edge. This is where the writer, one of the four, takes up residence. It occurs to him that on this perfect afternoon an experiment in natural writing could be conducted.

The story is told as we are reading it. As the day turns to afternoon strollers in the park pass the sight more frequently, and the idyllic scene is infused with additional characters.

A horse and rider stop by. The rider, a pale woman with apparent horse sense, removes her shirt and slacks to reveal a halter top and shorts. She then removes the horse’s saddle but not his bridle, climbs onto his back and rides him into the water. The horse makes low snorting sounds that his mistress interprets as pleasure -- the onlookers wouldn't know horse pleasure from horse drowning. The writer wonders if the horse is reluctant to go in past its shoulders because it cannot swim with the weight of the rider. A minute later the rider announces something to this effect, as if answering the thought. It was a question that had occurred to him before, while watching westerns on television. He noted that they rarely showed the horses actually swimming the rivers. Recently he had seen one where the cowboy swam next to the horse, holding the reins.

The writer next wonders if the horse will shake when he gets out of the water. If so, will he do it in the close vicinity of the writer? The writer is not opposed to the gentle rain, it is just that it is the sort of thing one likes to know about ahead of time, though one rarely does. In fact the horse does not shake. A golden retriever had, only minutes before. But this was expected, seeing the way the dogs fur hung in heavy clumps down her sides. In fact it was a bit of a disappointment when none of the spray reached the writer as she shook to fluff out her coat and lighten the load.

Three girls from a neighboring town arrived, a town (a city really) that had no claim to ancient feudalism, not for the lack of peasants but for the lack of lords. In history they had made shoes there, and prizefighters. One of these girls was in sixth grade, one in seventh, the other was an older sister who was a sophomore at a regional high-school with an incredibly long name. Their city was largely a working class city. (As opposed to the town they were now in -- is it an irony that the homes of magnates had been a magnet for upper middle class development, so that the town without a middle class had become a town almost exclusively of it?). The girls had the marked arrogance and self-importance of girls of that age and that background in that era. They immediately approached the writer, asking, naturally enough:

__ Are you doing your homework?

__ Yes, I suppose I am.

The girls were having none of this patronage.

__ Are you a writer?

__ Are you a famous writer?

__ What's your name?

__ Do you know Stephen King?

__ Do you smoke?

__ No.

__ We do. We know it's bad for you but we don't care.

__ Gimme a cigarette.

__ You have your own.

__ I know, but I want a Kool. I'll trade you two of the Winstons.

__ Okay.

They decided to go for a swim. They went into the water, wearing tee shirts over their bathing suits. They came out after only a minute or two, and resurrounded the writer.

__ We have a new dress code at our school.

__ Yeah, skirts have to be over the knee. No miniskirts.

__ Yeah, and the boys can't wear those mesh tee shirts.

__ You should have seen the miniskirt she was wearing this morning, said the seventh grader, pointing to the sixthgrader.

__ It's red leather.

__ Her mother thinks she's a slut.

__ Yeah, she thinks I'm a slut.

__ What's a slut?, said the writer, thinking that no mother of a sixth grader could think her daughter was what he thought one was.

They looked at each other, then at the ground. They giggled.

__ You know, a prostitute, said the sixth grader.

They all laughed.

__ Maybe I'll wear my bathing suit top to school, said the sixth grader.

The three girls laughed again. Then the sixth grader pulled up her tee shirt to show her top, the point being to call attention to the size of her breasts. Her breasts were in fact quite large for a girl her age. The three of them weren't sure if this display meant anything, just as they weren't sure of the implications of the word slut. The writer, being a writer, was not sure either. Such displays of life dismayed him, for it seemed unlikely that he would ever be able to get this sort of power onto paper.

the lake

I'm getting hungry and it looks like rain

and it's a pain walking back through the woods in the dark. So we might as well get going. We've caught four good-sized bass and lost four or five others -- our hooks really aren't big enough. The fishing had been great, just like John said it would be. I caught two of the bass in that flooded ravine he showed me last fall. Caught one on the first cast and the other on the second. But I'm not all that accurate, and after I caught the fish I snagged the same stump twice. It's pretty tight in there, and besides, she's terrible. She lost three lures and only hit open water once. I didn't bring many lures, so I figured we'd be better off out here in the open. She lost another lure in the shore bushes, but then she found a spot shallow enough for her to wade out a bit so she won't catch anything on the backswing.

I saw her at a bar a week ago and knew I knew her but couldn't for the life of me think of how or where. She saw me and was apparently thinking the same thing. She waved me over to her table, and we solved the mystery. I had been sort of close to a friend of hers several years ago.

She asked me what my favorite color was. I said turquoise, the first color I thought of, for some reason. She took a turquoise ring off her finger and handed it to me. I forget what she said, but she wanted me to keep it. We traded phone numbers before we got too drunk, and the next morning the first thing I saw was that ring on my little finger.

A couple days ago she calls and asks if I want to go fishing. I had been thinking about fishing a lot lately, ever since I remembered I promised John I'd try out the ravine in the spring. It was funny the way he made me promise, as if it was something that was very important to him. Maybe it was. He once told me he liked fishing because it was the only thing he did that he wasn't thinking of something else while he was doing it. We never talked while we were fishing (she, on the other hand, never stops), but we had some nice talks in the car and in the woods on the way to the lake. He always spoke in a soft voice out here, and he liked to ask questions.

She reminds me of a girl who used to come down almost every day John and I fished here. The girl was about sixteen or seventeen, and she'd talk to us for about ten minutes and then go for a swim with all her clothes on.

I wasn't really surprise when I heard what happened to him. Some people were saying how shocked they were, but if they were it was only because they had closed their eyes. By the time he left he would go for days without saying a word to anyone. I'll bet a few were happy to see him go. He was making people uncomfortable.

So when Michael called to tell me I stayed pretty calm, it was something I almost expected. But the more I thought about it, the more it bugged me. I went out that night and got bombed. I ended up passing out in the woods on the other side of the lake. It was just getting light when I woke up, and it took me what seemed like hours to get home. I lost my glasses somewhere in the woods and I'm practically blind without them.

Since she caught her bass she's been talking about nature and life-cycles or cycles of life or some such thing. I think she knows I haven't been listening. I don't think she cares. I wonder what John would say, if he'd say anything at all.

he liked fishing

We do not keep good histories of ideas or items or events that

no longer concern us. This is the essence of history, for we cannot keep everything. Our accounts of earlier times are facile but wholly inaccurate -- we describe other eras as almost exactly resembling ours, and then champion the few insignificant details that we have permitted to differ as evidence of the advancement of the race. Thus the poverty of history. But therein lies its strength. History is a frame of our own making, we use it to bring out the picture we paint of ourselves.

The net hardly exists now, except as a metaphor (a tool for poets). Schoolchildren learn about it if they have a good teacher. Then they forget about it, just as we did. There is no history of the net because these days it means nothing to us at all. The discovery of the net was, in its time, a portentous scientific event. (Now if we know the story, we know it as an anecdote). It was believed evidentiary of any number of things; God, inhuman intelligent life, an earlier, more advanced race of earthlings. Who could have built a net around our solar system? Why was the net built? For protection? To prevent escape? Protection from what ? Escape to where? These were once interesting questions, difficult as that is to imagine now.

The speculation led to research, which led to probe upon probe. Nothing of significance was ever learned about the net, except that one couldn't get through it. Nevertheless, the net was the focal point of what passed for learned society. It was even a divisive political issue. But the only possible politics of the matter concerned the sending of probes. And this question died a natural death when scientists discovered that they had run every test they could think of several times. Plans were made for human inspection of the net, but nothing came of them, because the journey would be such a lengthy and arduous undertaking.

In time, the net evolved from a particular set of scientific observations to a cosmological fact. It was mentioned briefly in introductory astronomy textbooks, usually following the outer planets. Astronomers became aware that the net, while it had initially brought a great deal of attention to the field, was in the main bad for business. In epistemological discussions, it was given as an example of the inefficacy of science. It was employed by theologians to argue that science had passed beyond its natural boundaries. Now of course these are judgments we might expect from anti-intellectuals, but for a time these positions were assumed by some of society's leading intellectual lights.

Science, in response, focused on the net itself -- the difficulties of ascertaining its molecular makeup, its seemingly infinite strength. This led to the supposition, never actually proved, but almost universally assumed, that any force powerful enough to rip the net would no doubt destroy the delicate balance that permits the existence of our form of life in the solar system. Therefore any talk of breaking through the net was thought of as antisocial behavior.

There was, almost from the very beginning, an approach we might call the 'naive school'. It conceded the existence of the net but did not concern itself with the possible ramifications. The argument was that these ramifications, when viewed by the pragmatist in the light of the needs of daily life, were in fact invisible. We label this the naive approach because we know well that the import of a discovery cannot always be gauged upon initial examination. We usually associate this attitude with the ignoramus who revels in his ignorance.

Some casual observers have found irony in the superficial likeness between the naive school and the principled views we now hold. It is probably inappropriate to respond to such a simplicity, but one of our best philosophers has closed the matter with a parable. Two men sit in a sylvan paradise. One has been there all his life, and knows nothing else. The other has traveled the world, suffered desert heat and arctic cold. Who better appreciates the wood? The second, of course. It is the pursuit of knowledge that is the moral imperative, not the achievement of any particular truth. Is there on this earth a satisfying fact? Not that we have discovered.

The net lost its political importance, it lost its scientific importance, so eventually it lost its intellectual importance. Only then did it become a subject without rancor. But it was too late for astronomy, which never recovered from the inviduation. It is even said on occasion that we know less about astronomy than our ancestors, and while of course this is not strictly true, there is something in it.

Do peoples age as persons do? If so we have come to, it seems, our wizened maturity. The tumult and passions of youth are still with us, but with us only individually. There is a comfort in this age. There is a satisfaction in knowing that we have done what we have done, and done it with, for the most part, the best of intentions and passable results. There is even a greater satisfaction in knowing that we have set a solid base for the succeeding effort.

The future consists of ourselves. This has always been the case, but having arrived at the unknown future of others, and having ascertained our own future, from our present perspective it is that much clearer. Perhaps the net gave us the freedom to recognize the fact. 'Freedom' would have been a clumsy word in this context before the net. Now every person, or every educated person (is it an untoward social pride that has this commentator point out that these will soon be one and the same appellation?), knows this freedom.

We never think about the net anymore, and its death is a just one. It doesn't tell us anything about ourselves. And ourselves, we know now, is all we can know.

every educated person

This is one of the most important days of your lives,

says the Teacher, and they are listening. The use of the machine is a privilege society allows you, a privilege society is happy to grant you in return for your good citizenship. It does me good to see your faces here, happy, full of life; in short: young. Though I'm well aware that sometimes seems a curse at your age. But we must keep our enthusiasm in check, we must use it to take us where we want to go. We cannot let it follow its own nose -- enthusiasm is but a horse.

I know this is review for all of you -- it better be -- but we must once again go through the cardinal rules of the machine. (As you get older you will understand that it is possible to learn the same thing many times). Rule number one is the number one rule. Violation of it is cause for immediate revocation of your machine license, and you become, I can assure you, the scourge of knowledgeable society, much as the ignorant sometimes like to make heros of these types. The number one rule is two words: No Loops. A looped machine is a lost machine and each machine, as you all know by now, cost society dearly. There are a few safety practices which, if strictly adhered to, will go a long way towards keeping you from looping the machine. First, be very careful when entering and exiting the base reference area. It is here that you must, by definition, come close to a loop. If you follow the guides carefully you should have no problem. Second, until you have much more experience, go only in sectors which have an explicit direction. (Time, of course, is the most common). Keep track of your values in each sector and always enter later than the time you left last. If you are not sure of your values, do not enter the sector.

The use of the machine is a privilege society

Collen has got it bad, she say, and that ain't good. She spent another ducat at the machine,

and one can read from her volatility that the habit is taking its toll on her. She sits at the bar, and listens to the music, and cries when it's sad, which it almost always is. Though she'll dance like a dervish if it rocks, which it might. She takes comfort in these blues, feeling a life form, she thinks, feeling at one with higher organization and respecting the arbitrariness of a will that is more powerful that her own. At the machine she is distracted, if not happy, diving from level to level; seeing, hearing, feeling emotion. There's a cry, a sigh, she pauses in a reality unknown that does not welcome nor deceive her. She is a groundwire perhaps, she thinks, since she knows she is touched but does not transmit.

At the machine

It sure as shit ain't Peasant's Day.

The wheat is

too tall. The rain will be soon it will be cold and miserable it will be as it ever was in heaven one doesn't have to work so hard and there is time to bring in the wheat without being so tired and the sunshines always except in the summer when it rains every evening to drink the wheat and cool the people in heaven the beds have no bugs. These arms are full and strong morning to night swing the scythe. I will die and the wheat will still and my son will swing and the wheat will still and his son will swing and the wheat will still year and year and the wheat does still. Smell the meal. Wind blow the chafe.

At the machine

It's dark and industrial here, but it's wild and beautiful too. Steel mills and coal mines,

assembly plants, scrap metal yards, country clubs and wood and hills just beyond construction sites and just beyond chemical drums. In November it rains here and it is dark and cold, darker at four in the afternoon than it is at four in the morning. It rains those days through your coat through your shirt through your trousers, through your skin your flesh it rains cold rain on your bones. You live here you do what you can you laugh you drink beer and you know something about family and friends and you learn a whole lot about what can go wrong.

learn a whole lot about

How small it's all. How long how short

an hour. Teatrain found himself alongside Su, she and he ambulating at similar speeds in like direction.

__ You didn't miss anything.

__ Thank heaven. Teatrain was embarrassed but proud.

__ Have you answered your question about the continuum hypothesis?

__ In a sense. I know which approaches lead to a truth value and which do not.

__ Is that an answer?

__ Yes. No. I don't know. How did you know I had been thinking about it?

__ I overheard you tell Bradley. His office is next to mine.

The angst abated with something to do. Walking and talking one uses all the cells, there are none left for that outside view that is so unnerving. (We swing around corners like we're riding a gate. We finish the stairs and she hasn't added a cubic centimeter of breath).

At the door to her office his shuffle hinted of indecision, his mumble hinted of insecurity, and he gave Su no hint of what he expected of her.

__ Will you be at the talk on Tuesday?, asked Su.

__ Mulchinks? Yes, I hope so.

(Sinking in the morass of undefined desires. What's the best use of the next fifteen minutes? The fifteen after that? Going down for the umpteenth time -- one never drowns -- one just swirls around in the muck, slowly. Another conversation I've had a thousand times before? Still, I like her. Save me. Ridiculous. Save me from the next fifteen minutes. Why not. I've already made it through the last thirty seconds.)

__ Is that the philosopher Teatrain?

Voice from the wilderness, outside questions of her. Actually very simple. The voice is from the next office. The door is open. There is one Bradley Cohen. Spirited. (Saved socially, perhaps. What's the price?) Cohen followed his voice into the hallway.

__ Have you come to a conclusion about the continuum hypothesis?

__ No, but I've given it up.

__ Why?

__ I know as much as I want to.

__ Well that's good. But I'm sorry you quit it. You piqued my interest. Can we assume you've moved on to something else?

__ Well, there is something. I've only just begun it though. You might call it a detective story.

__ A detective story?

__ Come into my office and tell us about it, said Su, already leading the way.

__ A detective story, mused Cohen the muser, I love detective stories.

Teatrain sat down, crossed right leg over left, and stared out the window at the trees, the river, and the students on parade. (Nice view). There was a pregnant pause he had not intended. ( Mysteries, all of them. Church of mysteries. They are all mysteries to me).

__ I warn you, it's not organized. Nor is it rational or even sensible. It's only a couple unrelated ideas. But you might find it entertaining.

__ We might, teased Bradley.

__ I have been working on a conspiracy theory of computability.

Two laughs: one a snort, the other smaller, smoother.

__ It seems to me that someone wants to keep us from decidability results. There are a few events, which probably could not be shown to be statistically significant, but which are telling to the trained eye of the detective. I was first taken with the fact that two great logicians, Jacques Herbrand and Alan Turing, met early and untimely deaths. Herbrand wasn't just another human calculator. His nineteen thirty is a seminal paper, as Godel pointed out several times. He was an original and powerful mathematician. And he was only twenty-two when he died in a mountaineering accident. He is not as well known now as Turing is, but if he had a few more years, who knows? The circumstances of Turing's death have never been made completely clear. To this day not everyone agrees that it was suicide.

Of course the reason I find their deaths interesting is because of the things they were working on. We all want to know where the dividing line between decidability and undecidability lies. Both Herbrand and Turing came at it from the same side. After all, Herbrands nineteen thirty was a completeness paper, and Turing was primarily concerned with computing, a bias toward decidability by definition. It is no objection to point out that Godel or any other member of the cabal lived to a ripe old age. Obviously Gödel was on the other side.

__ Why would someone want to prevent decidability results?, said Bradley, dubious but playful.

__ Because they might lead to a dangerous algorithm, Teatrain mumbled.

__ What?

__ If the system were powerful, the algorithm that would likely come with the decidability result would be very interesting.

__ No doubt about that. But it doesn't make any sense. A system with any sort of power could represent Peano arithmetic and would therefore have undecidable statements. Besides, you can have interesting algorithms in undecidable systems.

__ But then those by definition only cover limited cases, said Teatrain. We want an algorithm that covers all possible cases in some important universe.

__ Such as?

__ The universe of the universe.

__ Wait a minute.

__ It would include, for example, human actions.

__ That's ridiculous. This is just a rehash of determinacy. And besides, even if it were possible, the size of the database would prevent application.

__ I'll grant you that that certainly appears to be the case. I am working now on the possibility of a giant database collapse.

__ What was that about human actions?, Su wanted to know.

__ If you had such algorithm, then with the correct inputs you could predict the future actions of any individual. Or, better, their actions contingent upon some event, an event within your control

A pause. Teatrain contemplated the rounded corduroy of his knees. Bradley turned to Su, but Su's gaze was fixed on Teatrain.

__ But what about your own actions? You're ignoring the central questions of determinacy. You ... Oh, the hell with it.

Bradley sat back in his chair and sighed.

__ If this is a detective story, you must have suspects. Who would want to keep such an algorithm from us?

__ Ignoring, as a good detective must, any possible altruistic motivation, I would say that it must be someone who already has it

__ And who might that be?

__ God.

__ God?

__ Of course.

__ If God was worried about such a thing, couldn't he just make the problem too difficult?

__ Even God could not make two plus two equal five.

__ Oh, come on.

__ You are the theologian. I am a detective.

__ Lord knows I am no theologian. I am a mathematician, I think.

__ Berkeley argued that that might be a fine distinction.

__ Give me some credit. My head is not completely in the mathematical sand. I listen to you on occasion, which must count for something. And I am well aware I invoke with some regularity principles that are difficult to justify. Now, do you mean all this allegorically?

__ I had not thought of it that way.

__I would ask you how you do think of it, but I am afraid of the answer. Do you have any other evidence?

__ Another possible victim. Frank Ramsey, a philosopher, mathematician, and sometime cohort of Wittgenstein's. He also died young. He is the Ramsey of Ramsey theory, if you've heard of it. He also did some work in economics, an alleged science predicated on the notion that there is some sort of great database collapse out there.

__ Well, said Bradley, you might also consider Clifford Spector. He was in his early thirties when he died, I believe. I hate to encourage you, but it is fun. I have to go, I have some errands to run. See you Tuesday.

(A rare show of courtesy, he never says anything in the way of good-bye. He probably pities me). He watched a tree move in the wind a moment, then shifted toward Su.

__ I have a vision of myself at the end of a movie. It is dusk and I am on top of a mountain. Great dark clouds rush by, interspersing with a deep blue on one side and a yellow orange pink wash on the other. The mountaintop is nothing but rock outcroppings. I am standing, with my arms outstretched, shouting into the wind. A very strong wind, blowing in gusts. At the end of my tirade I take a breath and with all my strength ask God one question: "Does the algorithm exist?". And from the valleys below, from the skies above, from everywhere, in the wind that threatens to blow me off of my perch, there is a resounding YY...EEEE......SSSSS.

With this I start to cry, bow my head, and the camera pulls away slowly as THE END rolls onto the screen.

Teatrain relaxed, drifted back to the window. He smiled to himself, hoping the effect was Cheshire-cat-like.

__ Well, he finally said.

__ Well, I found it entertaining

__ You are being polite.

__ I was raised to be polite.

__ Yes, well ...

__ But I truly enjoyed your little story.

__ You think I'm nuts.

__ A bit, yes.

__ Then the three of us are agreed, he said, motioning to Bradley's chair as if he was still in it.

Teatrain stood. Their eyes met and held. Thirty seconds passed.

__ You have work to do?

__ Yes. There is always work to do.

__ Then I will leave you to it.

__ Perhaps we could have lunch together before the seminar Tuesday?

Teatrain felt a warm rush with her invitation. He hoped he wasn't blushing.

__ Certainly.

He shouldered his bag and loped out the door, out of Su's sight with a slight wave of the hand. (More pity? But tempered by respect and I hope tainted with amorous interest.

Gravity is an amazing thing, down is so much easier than up. This stairway is one of Escher's. Endless hallways.

Step into the sunlight. To wait for the bus. To wait for the train. Moments planned to be useless. Hope there will be a seat. Always black kids in the back. Scary sometimes, twice sort of threatened me. Have enough change, feel the weight. Girl across. Thirteen maybe. Puerto Rican maybe. Pretty and dark in any case. Times like these can almost understand Chuck and Jerry and Elvis. The attraction of what they have not yet become. We deal in potential: hold a gun, rev a motorcycle.

This is hopeless. Can't go home. Off next stop. Bookstores).

To wait for the bus.

And just standing there waiting for the bus and the sun has begun to shine a little.

Waiting outside the Radio Shack CVS combination on Commonwealth Ave. A kid comes out, too young to be on his own, and not on his own, you can feel the unseen attachment. He runs out the door and runs over to me to hide behind the green mail depot box I'm standing next to. He signals me to keep quiet with a finger on his lips. Naturally I follow his directions, especially as I have no idea who I'm supposed to not tell. And then she walks out the door, spots him out of the corner of her eye but pretends not to, and walks unconcernedly down the street towards us. He holds his back stiff against the box, reaching for a toy gun in his pocket At the appropriate moment he jumps from behind the box and lets her, his own mother, have it: BLAM BLAM he says.

He runs out the door and runs over to me

That first watch. Timex of course, it's hard to imagine a time when all time

wasn't Timex. Isn't it now? It was then anyway.

So we must time everything, and everything has it's time. Ten seconds to the bottom of the stairs at a reasonable speed, one at a time. Twenty all told from the kitchen to the bedroom at a hustle. How long can we make a ball stay in the air. The songs on the record are about how long it says on the label, though it's hard to get it exactly right with the ones that fade away at the end. A minute thirty is plenty for a bowl of cereal, the drive to Newtonville this Thursday was five minutes forty-three seconds from close of car door at top of driveway to open of car door at Star Market parking lot. Asphalt to asphalt, dust to dust.

How many baskets can be made between now and five thirty. Call the dog, how long until she gets here? Is she in the woods behind the school? Is she in the corner of the yard, in her hole underneath the doghouse? Is she chasing squirrels out front? Can this be guessed from the time it takes her to meet her dinner?

How long do I pee? A thirty second pee is a pretty good one. If in a hurry can take a thirty second pee in fifteen or twenty seconds, a serious rush into the bowl, and here we begin to understand the notion of rate of flow.

dust to

His lips were dry and cracked. They felt as if they were made of crushed potato chips.

They felt

Don't fuck with my text I'm telling

you I write the way I write because I like the way I write and I think the way I write is right if you know what I mean.

There is the story, I don't need to remind you but will anyway, of the brilliant but unbalanced journalist, who used to hang out in a place down the street, one of those Irish places, the something and something. Anyway this fellow, what was his name, Josephson or something, anyway he was good, only a matter of time before he got his Pulitzer, they said. Now he thought he was a writer as well as a journalist, and he was proud of it. But you know how editors are. He bitched that they cut the heart out of everything he wrote. Every flourish, every interesting cadence, everything about his writing that he liked, his editors would cut and replace with their usual tepid drivel. And finally it drove to the edge of the abyss, where all is fury and fear, and damned if he didn't show up one day at the desk and proceed to blow away every one of the offending editors and then himself in rapid succession.

Now of course this little tale should in no way be construed as a threat. I will only pause to remind you that my actions are after all my actions, in the sense that what I do is entirely up to me. And you know how I feel about people fucking with my prose.

he thought he was

Well you know I've had a few ideas before and I don't mean to

bug you but even you said that some of them might have made a good book and maybe I didn't get the proposal all together on that last one like you told me to but to tell the truth I kind of lost interest after a while I mean it's still a good idea but I think I've got a better one. So bear with me I'll try to be brief but....

The idea is a collection of American tall tales, modern ones. Told in the fine American tall tale spirit. You know, the sort of thing that Mark Twain used to do. Life is full of these stories.

For example I was taking a bus up here from Hartford last Christmas and I got to talking with the bus driver. And he told me about this time he had a bus full of old ladies on a snowy day. He came over the top of a big hill to find that it was sheet ice on the other side --- all down the backside were cars scattered all over the road. He hit his brakes to see if they would hold at all, and immediately started fishtailing back and forth. The old ladies gasped. He let off the brakes to gain at least steering control. He got through the cars all right, just barely, but at the bottom was a jackknifed rig and a skidded out tentonner, front wheels in the snowbank. There was space between them, but not much. In any case it didn't look like there was enough to get by, but it's not as if the fellow had much of a choice. The old ladies gasped again when they saw what was ahead. Well they made it through, he told me, just made it he said, bent back the rear view mirrors on both sides. Cat’s whiskers, he said.

There's plenty of these, I think you'll agree. I hear them all the time. Some kid will be talking about how fast he was going on his motorcycle. A lot of these stories are about speed and motor vehicles. And then of course there are the fish tales. can't tell you how many of those I've heard. And it's literature too isn't it? I mean what is the Old Man and The Sea if not a fish tale?

The gridiron was marked out, the posts set,

Teatrain looked out on nature cut, formed, and held, and wondered what kind of football team this place could possibly have.

Teatrain looked

And what is the history of the machine?

Whence it came? Where it goeth? As we know of all discoveries, it must have been the natural result of a set of propensities, a primordial soup of the needed ideas, coalescing into a plausible notion. (The parallels of course extend -- is there a significant difference between the logic of science and the logic of life?).

Is there a moment of time or place where the machine became the machine as we know it? A particular twist or rent in history wherein we can see all of what the idea became from what it was? This is unlikely. Technology rarely embodies gestalt. And, of course, from this distance it appears a smooth road indeed. There are those who insist on romantic notions of IMPORTANT MOMENTS, and it is easy to forgive such romanticism. Only the most hardhearted has never hoped to have such a moment in their personal history. But where, honestly, to point here? Moveable type? The digital computer? The first generating algorithms? Mightn't we as well point to the first codified scratches some primitive left in the sand?

IMPORTANT MOMENTS

Passing three empty classrooms on the left, Teatrain entered the fourth.

He closed the door and sat in the middle of the room, fingers of the right hand drumming the writing arm. The room had two blackboards, each running the length of a side.

He walked to the board at the front of the room. He hefted a long piece of chalk and began writing in a small, neat script in the upper left corner.

1. It is impossible to give structure to beliefs. Once they have structure, they are no longer beliefs. I use the word 'religious' in the sense of 'having to do with belief or faith'.

2. The choice of a language for a calculus is a religious decision.

3. The Church of Reason has no pipe organ. In its place sits a typical computer terminal with a screen and a keyboard.

A user sits in front of the terminal and types in a statement or a series of statements concerning one subject or another: "the information'. Below each line of printed words is a dark bar. This bar is also print, but the characters are too small to read. Both sizes of print speak of somewhat the same subject, but they do so in different manners. It might be that the lower (smaller) level is more technical that the higher (larger) one. Or it might be that lower level somehow explains the level above it. Or some other relationship.

The machine is equipped with a cursor. A cursor is a point on the screen represented by, say, an asterisk, which can be maneuvered to any position on the screen by control buttons on the keyboard. Perhaps here the cursor is limited to tracks in between to readable print and the dark bar. The cursor is placed below the information to be explored at a lower level. On the keyboard is a button labelled 'level change -- down'. When the button is pressed the screen changes to show in readable size what had formerly been the dark bar below the cursor. This new screen also has a dark bar below the readable print, and so on.

There is also, of course, a button labelled 'level change -- up'. Here the cursor identifies the place the readable text will take in the dark bar of the next level up.

4. If the lower level is to somehow refer to the level above it, it must have a part of the upper level as its referent. The user must decide how much of the upper level each section of the lower level will refer to. This might be just the word directly above it, or it might be the phrase, the sentence, or the paragraph; or perhaps instead the concept or idea.

5. There must be some method of communication or comparison of beliefs or faith, but I cannot describe it.

6. The less of the upper level the lower level refers to, the greater the jump between levels. A great jump in levels is one that goes from a simple term, say a single word, to a lower level that consists of a long and complicated discussion. Extending this property to each successive level in either direction (up or down) results in a chain of levels we can call 'large jump' levels.

The user can also tend in the opposite direction. He can try to make the jumps between levels as small as possible. When he reaches the point where the lower level refers to all of the upper level, there is no longer a distinction between levels.

7. Although the machine was introduced as a typical computer terminal, there is no reason why the screen must be of typical proportions. A larger screen might enable the user to read two levels of print. A still larger screen might allow three levels to be read. We are led to an alternative model of the machine: the information printed in the respective levels on a wall. Position in relation to wall would determine the level the user reads. The further away the user, the higher the level read.

8. The machine is always on. Or, in the alternative model of the machine, the user is always somewhere in relation to the wall. And if the machine is operated at all, it has a collection of beliefs.

9. A section is a contiguous collection of information on a single level. The amount of information that makes up a section can also vary. If the sections contain much information the levels structure will less obvious to the user than if they contain little.

10. An intuition makes same-level sense.

11. At some time we have to assume we know a statement's function in the context it was presented. Then we can move on to the next statement.

12. At some time in the use of the machine the user is likely to come up against a level that has either no level above it or no level below it. A statement without a level above it and a level below it is not a reasonable statement.

13. By manipulating the information, as the above variables have shown the possibility of, any jump between levels can be bridged. Thus no two levels have an inherent difference, or are, more specifically, two levels.

If the user attempts to force the machine to define a particular jump, the jump is bridged and therefore disappears. The levels exist only as a result of a desire to have the machine display them.

14. The notion of levels may invite us to outlaw the possibility of self-reference on the same level. For it seems natural to say that the process of comprehending a self-reference is a process of leveling.

15. Any last level is a religious statement.

The last levels constitute the tenets of the collection of beliefs represented in the machine.

16. One might try to avoid reaching a last level by having what would have been the last level refer to (or be referred to by) information located elsewhere in the machine. But eventually the user must choose between circularity, evolution, or a last level.

Therefore she cannot always expect to explain a level by reference to the level beneath it. And he cannot always expect to gain perspective on a level by reference to the level above it.

17. Maybe you can decide what belongs in what section by linguistic analysis, employing your favorite theory.

18. Is the machine a system? Do we make it one by requiring that the information entries be statements and fit the levels schema? That is, are we forced to think systematically if we try to think sensibly?

19. So what would someone mean if they were to say: "I'm not religious"? That they never go to the machine? No. They mean they are always at the machine. Just as they are always breathing.

20. I could present a calculus (or many different ones) not with the intent of proving something, or even of convincing you of its power, but of seeing how far along you will follow me. Where will you say "this is wrong" or "this leads to a contradiction"? Will you grant me my symbols no matter what I say they stand for?

What sort of faith is it to write down a symbol?

21. If the machine could be made to do the leveling itself, then we would have an intelligent machine.

22. If there were some sort of objective standard with which to distinguish particular levels, we might be able to describe our notions of the truth in terms of the numbers of levels on which the statement in question and ourselves are in agreement. But I do not see the standard. So I do not see truth in numbers.

23. Can we talk about the machine -- in the machine? Is it impossible to be meta-religious? Where does that leave this discussion?

24. We face the riddle of creation.

the machine

There are patterns of life, patterns of behavior, they repeat just as surely and continually

as the fabric on my bedspread, she thinks. I cannot do or say or be other than what I am. I know this from experience.

She walks everyday now, walks to the point of abstraction and exhaustion. She walks sometimes from one end of the city to the other, hardly noticing, not pausing, she doesn't stop the marvel at the thousands of supposed realities she passes. She has no interest in, and doesn't believe in, the notion of a thousand little dramas that some claim is the city.

a thousand little

Early morning. The snow is falling, soft, quiet, all the world is

a light, light grey in the new light. It is snowing hard, but not driven. It is snowing better than a couple inches an hour, big flakes, the air is thick. The quiet is immense, all is muffled by the heavy medium. An automobile crosses the parking lot in complete silence. There is no wind. The snow piles precariously on roofs and ledges and handrails. It falls on the man-boy as he stands on the walkway, piles on his shoulders and knit hat. He watches nothing at all, and everything he can see, feeling the whiteness, the softness, the freshness. He feels warm, warm in spirit, warm in body. He feels like crying, but does not cry. It would be a cry of happiness. Much is right with a world that can be this beautiful.

Early morning. The snow is falling, soft, quiet, all the world is a light, light grey in the new light. It is snowing hard, but not driven. It is snowing better than a couple inches an hour, big flakes, the air is thick. The quiet is immense, all is muffled by the heavy medium. An automobile crosses the parking lot in complete silence. There is no wind. The snow piles precariously on roofs and ledges and handrails. It falls on the man-boy as he stands on the walkway, piles on his shoulders and knit hat. He watches nothing at all, and everything he can see, feeling the whiteness, the softness, the freshness. He feels warm, warm in spirit, warm in body. He feels like crying, but does not cry. It would be a cry of happiness. Much is right with a world that can be this beautiful.

She

Early morning. The snow is falling, soft, quiet, all the world is a light, light grey in the new light. It is snowing hard, but not driven. It is snowing better than a couple inches an hour, big flakes, the air is thick. The quiet is immense, all is muffled by the heavy medium. An automobile crosses the parking lot in complete silence. There is no wind. The snow piles precariously on roofs and ledges and handrails. It falls on the man-boy as he stands on the walkway, piles on his shoulders and knit hat. He watches nothing at all, and everything he can see, feeling the whiteness, the softness, the freshness. He feels warm, warm in spirit, warm in body. He feels like crying, but does not cry. It would be a cry of happiness. Much is right with a world that can be this beautiful.

The water flows, one notices, when you look closely. It is hard to say from where to where. From over there somewhere, then perhaps off in that direction. But direction is a relative term here (isn't it everywhere?) and since this is a destination not a place one could set off from, well, it doesn't matter so much. The pools are clear and dark, the water is cool not cold. There is a fine mist in all directions that does not inhibit local definition, though at times it seems possible to have your own cloud. In the distance this place does not end it merely stops being where you are.

The trees are marble, sometimes pale, sometimes white. As the water flows around the trunks it sometimes in some places forms tiny whirlpools downstream. The water sounds are the only sounds. The deck is marble as well, one can sit there with ones legs in the water. The buildings weave in and out, the water flows around and under and through. There are courtyards and pools, columns and pools. There are the trees, the ever beautiful trees, the magnificent trees; marble bark, some full, some stumps, some lean into the water, some sway. The trees are ponderable, they are restful.

Across the large pool, through four or five columns, up stairs then down, in a sunken spot middled with a pool, sits a woman. She contemplates the edge of direct light as it processes up her shinbone. The light rays through an opening in the ceiling above the pool. She is relaxing, taking a moment in the middle of a series of tasks she feels she must complete. There is no machine in sight, but there is machine everywhere, the room itself is the machine. When she decides to go back to work there is no apparent change, except that she sits a bit straighter. She is stiffer, tense perhaps, she is concentrating.

And then her self, and the room, and the place, are machine. They pass through levels seamlessly. The journey has a directed flow, an organization and beauty that the unaware can only feel, that sense that there is a higher order present. She sings and dances without moving, the particulars of time and space are made to contrast and harmonize with each other, it is a masterful performance.

The connections between events are subtle, each of them carries meaning. In fact a study of her connections only would be more than most could undertake. And the events. The events she chooses are colored --colored of course by the fact of their choice, but colored well beyond as well, by the order, by the grouping and timing of choices, by their contradistinctions. Her images run the full range of emotions, the full range of analytic possibilities. One sequence has a logical and convincing effect, the next is a purely artistic effort. She moves with the sure hand of the experienced traveler; she does not trivialize others experiences, nor does she glorify by cheap and superficial associations. At every step of the journey she is respectful of her surroundings, but she will use bold strokes when bold strokes are required.

The mood intensifies, and her face stiffens under the strain. She is now up against the borders of her art, at the place where good practice and strong art begin to intertwine and perhaps compete. But it is necessary, she believes, for practice itself is only the art of the ancients. She understands that all cannot be known. She understands that though her level must appear incredible or even impossible to those without her sophistication, she herself is midstream of another level, another way of thinking, a thing she tries to imagine the totality of. She understands that it is by definition impossible that she succeed at such an exercise, but she believes it is good for her to push her abilities to failure, so that she might better understand the possibilities of success.

of her art

As it is it has ever been. So says the preacher,

but what does he know? There must be a time or place when a man don't have to go down into that hole six days a week just to keep his kids hungry and his wife in a sack. It can't be right that a man sees sunlight but once a week, and he's too goddamn tired to get out of bed then. I love my kids, and that wife of mine, couldn't give her up for anythin, but I can't say there aren't days I don't regret gettin married and starting a family. Because once you got a family there ain't no place you can go round these parts except into the hole. My daddy died of the lung, coughing and sputtering. It wasn't pretty. My momma, god bless her soul, I caught her crying over him now and then. He gave up, though he never stopped being angry. He stopped trying to get the dust off him. Momma told me once, near the end, that when they were courting he was already in the hole, but he was the only miner she knew who cleaned his fingernails everyday -- they were as pink as mine she said. The last year he never took a bath that I noticed. He worked to the very end. Said why not, he was dying anyway, a few more gulps of dust couldn't hurt him anymore anyways. And he said down the hole a man could spit anywhere he pleased. He wouldn't go to church anymore, said he didn't want to be spitting in front of the whole congregation, and he'd be damned if he was going to choke so folks could hear that fool of a preacher.

I remember how I saw him as a boy. Seems I've always had this one picture of him. It's dusk and he's coming up the path to the house. I guess I'm on the porch doing something. And as he climbs the stoop he fills the sky. His face is black, and dark anyway underneath the brim. He nods to me. I see his neck, black too, but streaked where the sweat has poured in rivers. He takes off his shirt to wash and he reminds me of a raccoon, the way he's striped, not quite so black where his shirt covered him.

Of course these days I look just like him. And I cough every once in a while. Not too bad. But there's an itch down inside that doesn't quite get scratched no matter how hard I hack.

into the hole Doesn't life take the most curious turns? Here I am, a literate man -- almost a man

of letters. I have been scribe and teacher to the rich and powerful. I have traveled much of the world. I have been to the Nile. And yet I am here. It is not the first time my tongue has gotten me into trouble, but I suspect it will be the last. It is evident that I am to meet my end on this godforsaken island in those godforsaken salt mines. There is irony in it. It has been the struggle of my life, to, raise myself above the illiterates from whence I sprang, to control my destiny.

It has all been for naught. I will die, I am dying, just like the rest of the common slaves. We are not even oxen here, an ox is a valuable animal. It is obvious from the way they treat us that we are not valuable animals. We are worked to death, is all. We are not fed enough to live on, nor allowed enough sleep to work on. The whip cracks to keep us going at a speed we surely cannot maintain. Those who are injured, or exhausted, or who just cannot keep pace, are pushed aside. And those who do not work are not fed.

They do not worry about escape, since the fresh water is guarded, and there is nothing to eat on this island that is not brought here. A sentence to these mines is a death sentence, the outcome as sure as a stoning or having ones throat cut. Working the mine is better than this moment, for it is dying and it is better to die than to observe oneself dying.

these mines is The air is getting thick boss, it is. The boys are afraid to light a match they are, they afraid it

a death

won't stay lit, and from the taste of things they probably right. These boys keep their lights turned on, but I turned mine off. I know what's in front of me. Ten dying boys, is all. We ain't heard any noises, and if we ain't anything by now they most likely couldn't get to us in time anyways. They probably wouldn't bother. They of the opinion that this line is about played out. They thought we was dogging it, because we came up with so little lately, and they turned mean, meaner than I ever seen them. It's gotten so they've been whipping us every night, just regular. Those cuts got no time to heal, they just get deeper and hurt the more. They killed my best man that way.

These boys is quiet now, like I told them to be. They listen to me, they know this old boy been under for twenty years now, finding diamonds for the man. I told them I been caved in before, which is the truth. I ain't told them that that time weren't much like the situation we're in. We had an air shaft then, that stayed open, and it was a new line, and I was one of fifty fresh boys down that hole. The man does not spend moneys he don't have to, but he was thinking there was diamonds in that line, and fifty fresh boys cost money to replace. We had a white man down there too, but he was no account and I think it would have been fine with the man if he didn't come up.

We probably buried near to the top of this line. Everybody knows we been digging too fast. I know, and the man know, that that bracing ain't worth the empty dirt it's been keeping up. Twenty feet shores when they should have been every five in earth like that. You don't see the man coming down this line, he's no fool.

I'm a top boy, they ain't got many been down in the hole twenty years. And the man always needs a good top boy. But I been slowing down, I been coughing a bit, and don't think the man ain't noticed. I know why I been sent down this line day after day for months now. It's the man telling me he don't need me, and he don't, I guess. He got a thousand starving niggers just begging to die in this hole. So I know the man ain't going to kill himself to get me out.

Ain't it a joke on the man that I should find today what I ain't found in twenty years. I got in my hand a rock to beat all rocks. I seen some big ones but I never seen anything like this. I got a rock that's worth everything that's come out of this line put together. These boys don't know I got it. But even if they did they wouldn't understand why I did what I did. I am truly sorry these boys got to die, but you know they are losing much less that they think they are. A few songs boys, maybe, but not much else. This hole may keep you alive a while, but it sure ain't no life. I knew that to be a fact when I found this rock today. I just pulled it out of the wall, on a hunk of rough, and I just couldn't see handing it to the man. It'd just keep him going, keep boys like myself down in this hole

Of course if one of these young boys had found it he would have ran to turn it in to the man, for the off time and the bonus. But what are a couple coins? What is off time to me? What's a day off in twenty years? I thought I might be able to get the rock by the man, might be able to get by the search. I've thought about it ever since that first cave-in. In the excitement of digging us out they forgot about the search altogether. So today I sent these boys ahead of me and I gave that shoring a whack. Ain't it their luck and mine that it gave way up the line instead of back. Of course if the man don't come get us, he won't get the rock, and I guess we all lose.

it was a new line

Su was standing, leaning over her desk, making piles of folders.

__ Finished?

__ For the afternoon.

__ May I walk you somewhere?

__ How gallant. I'm headed home. It's about six blocks, off Concord Ave.

Su put on her jacket, put three inches of folders into her leather satchel, turned off the light, closed the door, and smiled at Teatrain as they started off.

__ What shall we talk about?

__ Anything but mathematics.

walk you somewhere

Animated, Teatrain stepped off a curb and

appeared to be continuing into the street. Su grabbed his arm and pulled back, the light was against them and a car was approaching rapidly from the left. Teatrain stopped, looked, took a step back, and watched the car whiz past in front of him. He pictured the front bumper catching him just above the knee, tipping him while breaking his leg, so that he bounced off the windshield and hood, sending him fifteen feet into the air, from which he fell, limp like a dummy, landing on his shoulder and head and coming to rest on his back, legs twisted at unnatural angles, life having left him when his head hit the corner where the windshield meets the roof, a one inch wide strip of chrome the instrument of death.

__ Thanks. I should be more careful.

They walked on in silence, a comfortable silence. Amid asphalt, autos, hedges, trees , bricks, leaves, and darkening sky they caught occasional glimpses of each other's eyes.

__ This is where I live, said Su, standing at the bottom of six steps leading to the front door of a four story brick townhouse.

__ What floor?

__ Fourth.

They stood, mute, for a minute or so.

__ I would ask you in, but I am expecting a friend for dinner and I must start cooking.

__ I see.

__ An old friend I haven't seen in a long time. I'm sure the conversation would bore you.

She wasn't sure why she was telling him this, but it seemed to have the desired effect of brightening his countenance.

__ It was a nice walk, said Teatrain. Perhaps sometime we could ...

__ I'd like that.

__ Well, see you Tuesday in any case.

the desired effect

creating my present

Captain America steps from the bedroom to catch himself in the full length mirror

in the dressing room. He considers the red, white, and blue condom that stripes his you-know-what. He is pleased with the effect, thinks it is ridiculous but has personality, though he wishes the ticklers were longer and located only at the top, so that one would be reminded of those new years eve favors that go POP.

Now in the bathroom he considers the range of unguents and oils, testing a few in his fingertips. He wonders for a moment, ever the scientific one, if some combination of them heretofore untried might not turn out to be lethal, malodorous, or worse yet fertile. Caught up in the moment as he is, he lets the possibility fly and grabs the whole lot of them.

The agent of his passion lies abed adorned only in a cowboy hat. She is goosepimpled on her left side from the breeze through the open window. Her eyes are wide open, she is awaiting the Captains return. His entrance is cause for much laughter. She throws him the hat and busies herself with the creams, lotions, and oils. She is sniffing and smoothing on him and herself, on smooth handles and in nooks and crannies.

__ Melissa, says the Captain, lust, love and longing in his eyes, I could live forever in this moment.

This is fortunate, because at that moment the white flash hits and their personalities become no more than past arrangements of atoms.

the white flash hits

Not so far away penumbra are breaking up,

and a divergent order is beginning to appear. Oscillators sync, the wave propagates and time end becomes time beginning. An ad campaign is born. A need is manufactured, a hustle is begun. At this embryonic stage, of course, the dickering over percentages and commissions and stock options slows things up a bit, because it seems like this thing is going to fly, and there is no chicken as valuable as the one that has yet to be hatched.

Oscillators sync

Control he said and control it is.

The meters can only tell you what you want to read. There is the uncertainty principle of your own poor brain: you cannot touch your perceptions without affecting your perceptions. The boss's articulation is terrible but his point is deep, or so think the cadets, in spite of the arrogance of youth and perhaps because of their ignorance of philosophy. The platitudes continue, and the cadets soak it up, anxious to be the best at every known game. Rules are guides, says the boss, they are all you know in unfamiliar territory, and so you stick to them. But as you come to know the area, there may come a time when you yourself must help write the guidebook, you must become the Rules. Is that understood? The cadets of course understand, the boss marvels at his eloquence, and another grain of sand is added to the island in the chaos.

Organization is a result of will only, belonging only to those that will it, says the philosopher, in the book on the shelf behind the boss. The philosopher wondered if a chair wondered about being a chair. He realized that the question was perhaps harder than it seemed, because in this universe chairness is an adjective and lots of things are sat on.

Organization

It was a rather ingenious setup, he thought. As he stood

on the ledge he could see into the kitchen window. He watched one of the kitchen boys slice ripe tomatos into little rocking wedges. The boy tossed the scraps to the right, into a garbage bag held open by a wire frame. Outside, against the wall, was a small dumpster, half full of bags similar to the one hanging in the kitchen. About two feet above the open dumpster were a couple swinging doors, made of plywood, together about three foot square. He could not see the chute, but he inferred its existence.

As he walked back to the front of the hotel, he began to think again about his wedding day, three days earlier. It was a day he was only beginning to recollect. He remembered that it was one of the few times in his life that he felt he was part of something larger than himself. He remembered that he hadn't enough time to speak with everyone. In fact there had seemed to be many things he wanted to say, but he hadn't said any of them.

Underlying his recollections was not a memory but a feeling. And it was not a good one. His stomach, which had always been strong, was now failing him. He did not try to reason the feeling away, as he had several times in the past three days. As he opened the door he realized that the feeling could not be defeated with passive resistance.

__ Hi. Find anything interesting?

She looked right at him as she spoke. It seemed obvious to him that she loved him. He said nothing in response. He sat down on the bed and glanced at the picture in the picture window. It was beautiful, he had to admit. Waves were crashing on the rocks, and there were seagulls circling about a lobster boat pulling traps.

It was the first silence of their marriage. He felt her looking at him, but did not turn.

__ What's the matter, honey?

There was nothing tentative about her tone or her first use, as well as he could remember, of the word 'honey' in reference to him. It occurred to him that his future was inextricably tangled up with hers. But this didn't seem like something he should say to her. He didn't know what to say, so the silence continued. He stood up, but still did not turn toward her. He watched the lobster boat leave the picture.

__ I have this funny feeling about our wedding, like something was wrong but I don't know what.

Now he turned toward her. His eyes were deep in their sockets and his lips were tight. She knew it was a look of pain. She considered the matter a moment, and then settled in, visibly deciding to tell him something.

__ There was this person I used to see, this guy from New York. I've mentioned him before.

__ Yes.

__ Well, like I told you, he wanted more out the relationship than I did. He claimed to be in love with me and all that. I never thought anything of it really.

She was dancing around what she had to say, and he knew it. He also knew it wasn't her style. She sighed, then let it out.

__ He came to the wedding.

He was shocked, but only turned his head. The picture window was now endless blue water.

__ I don't recall seeing his name on the invitation list.

He found a small satisfaction in his witticism but his overwhelming emotion was one of despair.

__ I didn't invite him, I don't know how he even knew about the wedding but, but....

She started to cry. He made no move to comfort her. He considered himself the injured party. She found her voice again.

__ I was so angry. He just walked into the room when I was waiting for the ceremony to begin. He said he had to talk to me, but I wouldn't let him. Then he just left.

He turned back to her, and she held his eyes steady in hers. After a long moment of locked stare, he returned to the window. Nothing was clear to him. He knew he was only reacting to the situation, that he was not in command of himself, and he hated himself for it. His stomach hurt. It felt like gas pains.

The day darkened as he stood there. She considered mentioning dinner, but decided not to. He was also thinking about dinner, wondering if it would help his stomach, hoping it would improve his mood.

__ Do you want to go to dinner?

__ Sure.

They prepared themselves in silence. He finished just a minute before she did. He watched as she stood at the dresser, putting in her earrings. As soon as she finished he said:

__ Ready?

__ Yes.

She knew he was rushing her for no reason, at least no reason that had anything to do with dinner -- there was still plenty of time. But she let it go.

They were silent again as they walked from their room to the dining room.

__ Two for dinner? asked the maitre-de in an indistinguishable foreign accent.

He nodded and they were shown to a table.

They ordered without discussion. He played with the silverware, sometimes tapping the tablecloth, sometimes just turning the pieces over. The salads passed without conversation. The main courses arrived without ceremony. She ate without pleasure and he ate, though he was not hungry. She thought she felt him soften, so she offered a diversionary suggestion.

__ We could pack a lunch and go out to the point tomorrow.

__ What did you have going with him that he felt he could show up on our wedding day?

__ I didn't ask him to come. I don't know why he thought he could come. It sounds like you are accusing me of something.

__ I'm not accusing you of anything, or maybe I am, I don't know. All I know is that you must have had a pretty heavy relationship with the guy.

__ Look, I told you all about him. We went out for a while, before I even met you. He was in love with me. It ended because I wanted it to.

__ When was the last time you saw him?

__ This is ridiculous. I haven't done anything wrong. I...

__ Just tell me when the last time you saw him ... when was the last time you saw him?

__ I don't know, it's been years ...

She started to sob, her chest heaving a little, but she would not hang her head. She returned his gaze even as tears formed. He had to turn away, knowing that otherwise he would lose the mean spirit he was carefully nurturing.

__ I don't know why you can't answer a simple question. It seems like there is more going on here than ...

__ Stop it. What difference could any of that make? I married you.

The waiter returned to clear their plates.

__ Are you interested in dessert?

__ No, I think we're finished.

She sat on the edge of the bed, watching him as he wandered about the room, picking up small items then putting them down, turning the radio on and off, sitting in one chair then another. Eventually he took a book out of a beach bag and began reading, seated in a chair next to the door. After a couple minutes she picked up a book that was on the nighttable and shifted to the head of the bed, her back against a pillow that was against the headboard.

Three-thirty a.m., if the clock radio is to be believed. He had not slept, or if he had, he was not aware of it. His stomach was worse. No position was comfortable. Lying on his front, his favorite sleeping position, was especially uncomfortable. He felt a rush of nausea, and sat up. The nausea subsided, but the discomfort did not. He got out of bed and put on some clothes. She had been periodically awakened by his rolling and shifting, and this new movement awakened her once again. She said nothing, and when she sensed that he was going to look at her she closed her eyes. She opened them just in time to catch his faint figure going through the door, leaving a hand behind to close it almost silently.

The path was barely lit. He felt sure he would stumble, but he didn't and in no time he was out in the open. He stood for a moment on the long ledge, taking in the sight. Then he began to make his way to the water. Navigating the rocks was difficult in the limited light -- he could not distinguish between shadows and differing shades of rock. He proceeded slowly, moving parallel to the waterline, climbing up and down. A hundred yards from where he left the woods he found a slightly rounded ledge, roughly twenty feet square. He walked to the edge, and found it fifteen feet to the water at that tide. A nice dive, he thought, and he might have been tempted to try it, but it was cool and it was night and he didn't know if the water was deep enough. He sat down at the edge. An undeniable wave of nausea came over him. He got up on his hands and knees, leaned over the edge, and threw up into the ocean. What was left of dinner came out easily, but he knew at the end of the first bout that he wasn't finished. Twice again in the next few minutes he leaned out over the edge, the last a particularly wrenching retching.

He settled back and felt better at last. The seed was gone. For a moment his head was empty, he felt only the breeze on his cheeks. Then his thoughts returned, and his troubles. He thought about what she said, and admitted to himself that she had a point. She had married him.

The wind picked up, and though he was dressed against the chill, he felt the need to be back inside. The return path was completely unfamiliar. Several times he thought he must have passed the opening in the wood that marked the way. Even when he found it he had no acquaintance with it.

He opened the door as quietly as he could. He disrobed, and slipped into bed next to his wife. She was still awake, but again pretended not to be.

He opened the door

Cold out, won't be much warmer in the

church. The parking lot is decaying asphalt. Have to wait for the policeman to stop traffic again to get across to the church. Mother and father are like walking stones, dead eyes, look only straight ahead and not even at each other. Try to remember what it was like a month ago? That queasy funny feeling that afternoon. Everyone acting strangely. Sunday school had been ridiculous. Funny in a way, we all just laughed at sister, she went to an earlier mass so didn't have the feeling. She couldn't understand it. She yelled at us but it didn't do any good. Finally she started to cry and left the room. We were quiet for a minute then but then when she was gone we all started to laugh again. It was so strange.

In through the front door. The church is always so big, and so dark. We sit further back than usual, which is fine, 'cause you don't have to look so much like you're paying attention. As we sit there I can feel the shame my parents feel. I've never seen them like this. Mother looks like she'd like to cry but she won't.

The altar boys come out, and then Father Kinney. He's queer, says Timmy. Always grabbing at the altar boys, says Timmy. That's why I didn't become an altar boy maybe. I mean I said no because Timmy said I shouldn't and mother and father didn't argue much though they really pushed Timmy into it. Father Kinney used to come to the house sometimes. Said Timmy was one of the best altar boys. One of the best ever. Timmy always hated him, I could tell.

Where's that place they're keeping Timmy now? Like a jail for kids. It's pretty tough in there I bet. Worse than school even. All the rough kids. I wonder if they cut his hair.

Wonder why he had me hide the bottle? He could have done it easy enough. It was like he wanted to get caught. I didn't know what to say when they asked me. The police had been to the house a couple times, but not to talk to me. Timmy wouldn't talk to them at all, at first. Why did I? I couldn't stand the way mother looked at me. She knew I knew something. She knew Timmy had done it, even though she didn't say so. She knew even when father was getting angry with the police. Then that asshole the district attorney they said he was came by. He said Timmy belonged in jail for what he did. Should go to jail for a very long time. Mother cried when he said that. But who really got hurt? Father said that everyone was talking about what could have happened instead of what actually did happen. He said that maybe everyone was acting the way they really want to -- like an Irish girl with a bit in her he said.

They whisper about Father Kinney and how they found him that afternoon. They never told me, but I heard what the kids say -- that was in the church without any clothes on. They said too he doesn't remember being there. In school the kids were talking about how they felt that afternoon. They talked to me about it too the first couple days, but not anymore. It's weird, sort of like being sick, but not.

I wish he hadn't given me the bottle. I wouldn't have had anything to tell them. He said that it was worth a lot of money and I should hide it good and be careful with it. Just a little bottle with an eyedropper top on it. About half full of a clear liquid. He said I shouldn't open it so I didn't. Then that Sunday morning he asked me for it. I almost asked him what he was going to do with it but I didn't.

I knew it wasn't good. He had that look on his face he gets when he's up to mischief. But I gave it to him. It wasn't too hard for him to do it, they said. He knew his way around the back of the church okay, since he was an altar boy. Finds the hosts. I wonder where they keep the hosts? And with the eyedropper puts a little bit on each one.

Father Kinney is dragging on and on as usual. He is talking about forgiveness. He never forgives anyone, that's what Timmy says. Timmy says that he's never forgiven Larry Murphy for skipping out on a retreat to go to a Red Sox game. And that was ten years ago. I was only one then. Timmy says Father Kinney isn't very Christian. I guess he really isn't.

Finally the prayer. Now I know I'm going to make it through. We're over the hump, like it's Thursday afternoon in a school week. Not too long now. Amen.

Look hardly anybody is going to communion. Just the old ladies who go to mass everyday. They must still be afraid because of what Timmy did. Well at least it means that the mass will be shorter.

He knew his way around the back of the church

Ho there! If it ain't good Dadelus himself, moping up the street with a leer

in his eye, well dressed, for a down and out struggling bloke, ready to turn to a statue of print the bustle about him. He takes notes with his eyes, fells a rare sun on his brow, shivers with desire.

The stroll today will be a long one, and a good one. One must take in the river, of course, its course, it is a daily ablution. These people, their privates, their private thoughts, are open to him, for what is his imagination but mind-reading? Is he aware of the debt he incurs? Is he aware that in writing it all down he makes himself a part? Yes he is, he says, why else would he do it? This is quite a ploy, my boy, methinks you would do it if you knew it was to be interred instead of published.

Well there young man. Top of the morning to you. Soft day thank god. Who will it be today? Which of us will find our way into your immortal soup? I tell you, we're depending on you, there ain't much in the way of trancendence for most of us average folk on these average days in this average city. I know I speak for all of us when I say I wish you the best and much success ... and my boy, have you noticed I'm stepping a bit lighter today? I've lost a couple years I tell you. I think it's this good spring air. And you've taken note I'm sure, with that notorious eye of yours, of this fine new waistcoat. Gift of the missus, it is, and on the whole I don't mind saying that things look about as rosy as they might to a man of my advancing years.

Dadelus deftly extricates himself, a smile a nod a wave and away he is. He is to continue his walk, continue to eat and drink the day until he is fat and must burn it off. To the river still, still river, still itself. And so are they, he thinks, however much they primp and strut and girdle their bellies. The more so, he smiles, the more so. The river is in sight, and he makes his way to the bank.

The river is in sight

So I go down to the river it's a nice day

after the rain -- it was nighttime at two-thirty today, clouds so big and black and complete it was almost total darkness, one could easily identify with those who thought an eclipse was the end of the world, for I would have easily believed that Boston was about to drop en toto into the earth through a radical rearrangement of the heavens, or some other equally forboding event, such as the halving of the earth by heretofore unknown seismic forces.

And when it rained, IT RAINED, so hard and fast that the streets and sidewalks seemed to all have an inch or two of standing water on them, gravity had yet to catch up with the deluge and make streams to the drains. I stepped out of the door at the office, stepped only the three steps to the curb, and hustled back, and was amazed at how wet I was. I wondered for a moment if you could breath in a rain like that, same as I sometimes wonder with my head under the shower nozzle.

In any case it cleared as dramatically as it had done everything else, and I found myself with an hour or two to kill and the department was choking me while the air was so nice and clean and crisp after the rain, so I checked out and headed down to the river, actually crossed it first and went down to the park on the Cambridge side, the one up by the big bend just west of the BU bridge, where the Cottage Park pumping station is, so I surmise it's Cottage Park, even though it's only the pumping station that has a sign on it.

It was restful and peaceful and interesting there, just me and the madman Frank.

__ Hey I hope I'm not bothering you. I'm Frank.

I might have guessed this, since I can read the name on three places on his person, and this is just the part of his person that is framed by my open car window as he bends down to look at me as I sit in the drivers seat. It says Frank on his cap, a billed cap from an aircraft carrier. It says Frank in indelible ink on the shoulder of his yellow foul weather jacket. Somewhere else too, though I can't remember now where. Frank takes a look at the paperwork in my lap and says

__ I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bother you. Hey, there's that guy.

That guy that he's talking about is someone who works at the pumping station, he's at the end of the driveway in an open garage door in the side of the station, a rotund figure in blue workclothes. Frank waves wildly to him, receiving no acknowledgment, there is no evidence that the man was ever looking our way. Frank leaves me and heads over to the entrance to the drive, stopping at the opened gate. He decides against that guy, apparently, and goes back over toward the rivers edge, from whence he came. I watch him and now notice three fishing rods there, leaning against the boulders that presumably keep those so intentioned from driving straight into the river. He picks up one of the rods, sets the reel for a cast, and cast he does, and cast he certainly does. From my perspective it looked like the lure landed halfway across the river, a tenth of a mile maybe, with only slight exaggeration. He reeled the lure in, pretty quickly, it seemed, stopping a couple times to deliver that wild wave of his, a wave that involved the full range of motion of his shoulder and arm, his hand way up above his head, his head swaying with the rhythm. Who he was waving to was a mystery to me, if not to him. He was facing the river, and there were no boats. The path on the other bank was obscured there by trees. Somehow the cars passing on the Mass Pike, elevated as it is, on the other side of the river, they're doing about fifty 'cause they're still a quarter mile from the tolls, somehow they made sense as the object of his waves. If any of them saw him I don't know, and couldn't know, since unless they got out of their cars and stood on the hood and waved back as he was, a grand wave, I'd never see them from that distance. Likely if any of them did see him they just rode and wondered, as I did, what or who he was waving at.

Frank brought the lure in, lay the rod against the boulder, picked another and heaved another one of his prodigious casts. He reeled this one in, stopping to wave a few more times. Three large white ducks crossed the road between me and Frank. He paid no notice to the ducks, nor they him. They disappeared into the bushes at the head of the drive to the pumping station.

While I was considering what the ducks might be doing in the bushes, Frank was taking off his slicker, laying it on the boulder, fishing a cigarette from a slicker pocket, holding it between his fingers, and beginning toward me. It was kind of a dance, his traverse of the short distance. He turned toward the river to wave a couple times, and once toward the pumping station, at the open but empty door. He weaved back and forth across the road, not unsteady in balance, in fact anything but. I got the feeling this was a sort of casual way to approach me, weaving about so that he just happened to end up next to my car.

__ Hey, you got a light? I don't mean to bother you.

__ Sorry, I don't. You're not bothering me.

__ I come down here to fish you know.

Then I remembered the lighter in the car.

__ Hey I've got a lighter.

But I was too late. Frank had found matches in his pocket.

__ Hey you like to fish? You know how to fish?

To ask me these important questions Frank bent at the knees and waist to get his head almost inside the window. Close up I could see that his was the face of a man who drank when he could. His nose was a gigantic red walnut shell. And there were splotches of burst capillaries on his cheeks. His features seemed to take on monumental proportions from the crevasses that ran through his face, and the weathering added to this larger than life aspect, though it was also true that at times when he had a point that required emphasis he put his face up so close that we were almost touching noses.

__ Yeah, I like to fish.

__ You want to do some fishing here? I don't mean to bother you ... I've got two rods, so we could do some fishing.

__ Well I appreciate the offer but I don't have that much time.

This was true. But also I was a little afraid of what might be caught in the Charles, and a little bit wary, I must confess, of becoming Frank's fishing buddy.

__ Okay, okay, okay..... okay. I don't mean to bother you.

__ You're not bothering me.

Frank wanders away from the car, doing that crazy dance. He ends up back at the rivers edge. Instead of picking up a rod he picks up a paper bag, it looks like it's wrapped around a can of beer. He lifts it and takes a couple manfull swigs. Meanwhile a couple six man sculls have come into view, along with a motorboat with a man standing in the bow with a megaphone, presumably the coach. They pull even with us by gliding, just about stopped dead finally, and they start to turn around. They look like large clumsy insects, legs moving in slow motion, easy to squash. Frank, of course, is waving to them all the while, they take no notice of him at all.

And meanwhile the ducks have come out of the bushes and are now heading down the drive to the open door at the pump house. I watch as the present themselves, the duck committee, to the round fellow who has reappeared. He feeds them, dropping breadcrumbs or something at his feet. Then my vision is blocked by Frank again, I hadn't noticed him coming, but I take note that he's here. He puts a hand on the windowsill, and I notice the tattoos that are now just Rorschach diagrams.

__ Hey I don't mean to bother you ...

I honestly have no idea what the tattoos on either forearm were supposed to depict, though on one I can almost make the name Frank in a cursive script come out, but I think perhaps I am forcing that. Then I get a glimpse of an upper arm as he turns -- he is always moving -- and there is a still pretty piece of cheesecake with long, long legs.

__ Where'd you get the tattoos Frank?

__ I was in the Navy for twenty-seven years. I've been everywhere. You what I'm an expert at? I'm an expert at fishing. I've fished everywhere. I bring a knapsack -- you know what I mean, a knapsack? In the knapsack I have everything you could ever need. Everything you could ever need in the knapsack.

He wanders away for a minute, bobbing and weaving. Then he notices the man at the pumphouse feeding the ducks. He walks back to me.

__ Hey, there's that guy.

And of course the big wave.

__ Everything I need in the knapsack. You know what I mean?

I don't know if I know what he means, I think I know but it's hard to be sure. I do find the idea of having everything you could possibly need in a knapsack an attractive one. I waste a lot of time worrying whether I have everything I might need.

__ Hey I could teach you to fish. But you know how it has to be done? It has to be on the job training. You know what I mean? It has to be on the job training.

He laughs, and I laugh too. It is funny how we make up new terms for the obvious. As if almost every skill one gets isn't by on the job training. Learning by doing. Learning.

__ You got some time now? A little while? I could teach you to fish.

__ I don't really have much time now. Sorry. I'd like to.

__ You're busy.

He's looking at the paperwork in my lap, which is more than I've done.

__ What do you do for work? What's that for?

I tell him and he nods with a smile.

__ You don't look old enough. Wayne, he used to live with me, he had keys to where they keep all the animals locked up in cages. Wayne was sickly though, skinny, he never did look very good. But he was a good guy. He helped me take care of my mother. He could cook and things like that. I can cook. I can. But Wayne was much better than this girl who lives with us now. She drinks all the time. Now I like to drink a bit, I do, I like to drink. But she drinks all the time. She's always drunk. And she doesn't help me with my mother at all.

I'm not sure how to reply to this. I try to imagine Frank taking care of someone else and I can't.

__ Hey you want to learn how to fish? On the job training.

I don't say anything this time. I just smile, ruefully I think.

__ Hey I've got two sons and a daughter, all of them older than you are. My son kind of looks like you.

__ I've got to get going.

__ Right, okay, sorry to bother you.

__ You weren't bothering me, Frank.

__ Well maybe you could come down here some other time. I'll teach you how to fish. I'm here all the time.

This I doubt a little, because I've been there before and not seen him.

__ I'll see you around Frank, good talking to you.

He smiles and heads back to the river. As I pull away he is waving across the river again. I see the wave now as a sort of reflex motion, a reflex born of innumerable tie ups and cast offs, every port in the sea.

tattoos on either forearm

Tattoo parlors cannot be dark, for the artist has to

see to work. This one was once a barbershop, an attractive barbershop. There is a wrought iron rail that separates the waiting area from the cutting chairs, the chairs that are now the tattooing chairs. There are mirrors, in which are etched pale white scroll designs along the edges. In the back is a small room containing a refrigerator for beer and a counter for rolling joints. In one of the chairs is a huge hairy man with leather bands around his wrists. The bands were latticed with chromed studs, shiny tiny dangerous pyramids.

There are four in the shop: the artist, the visitor, the man in the chair, and a punk rocker with a five inch mohawk. In silhouette the punk rockers head might remind one of a rotary saw blade, the sharpness of the edge of the haircut continued the simile.

__ Beautiful, isn't it?, said the artist to the visitor, referring to the tattooing pen he held in his hand.

He was choosing his colors and cleaning the pen, taking an obvious satisfaction in the preparation efforts.

__ I got it from this old guy Pretty Mac, best tattoo artist I've ever seen. He had the finest line. Worked only in black. Died about a year ago. Been doing bikers so long they all knew him. Times it seemed like a hundred of them outside his shop.

The preparations were now finished and the man in the chair let the back down, took off his shirt, and lay on his considerable belly. Half a scene that would evidently cover his entire back could be made out in the scab and wound. It was allegorical: a portrait of the man, seated leaning against a tree trunk, his motorcycle parked next to him. The tailpipe was a cornucopia, flowing out were the material goods of his world: appliances, motor vehicles and much else that was unrecognizable for the scab. The biker gave no sign of pain as the artist touched the pen to his skin.

__ Competition is tough but there's something going out of it just the same. The penal system turns out twenty guys a week who want to work with a pen. The punkers were a good scene for a while, but now they've been co-opted, just like the bikers, just like everything else. Every shithead in Hollywood with the cash to buy a Harley has got one. Bikers can hardly afford an old Harley. The new ones aren't worth talking about. AMF, a company that makes fucking sailboats. Sailboats. They just use everything as backround for fucking videos. Fucking videos.

__ Fucking right, came a mumble from the chair.

There was silence for a time, excepting the low, almost inaudible hum of the pen. The artist worked intently, blotting the blood from the skin with rapid repeating touches.

The afternoon became evening as the artificial light began to contrast with nature instead of complementing her. The talk was small in subject and little in volume as the tattoo progressed. The artist, the visitor, and the punker went into the back room to share a joint. When they returned the artist returned to work, talking now.

__ Say someone come in don't know what they want. Pretty Mac would talk to them a bit. It'd give him ideas. I do the same sometimes. Course most know themselves pretty well, they know what they're going to get, maybe they just haven't seen it yet.

Like a couple years ago I do this guy. One of my first really big ones. Biker wants his bike on his back. So I do this art shot of it coming right at you, put the handlebars across the shoulders. Come out fucking nice. A few months later he bought it on the freeway. He's on an overpass passing a station wagon when it just pulls into his lane, clips him and sends him right over the rail to the street below. Unbelievable huh?

__ Motherfucker, came another rumble from the chair.

__ Another guy, wants his chicks name. So I give him a nice script on his arm, real big you know, reads up. I seen him now and then over the next few years, do a couple little things for him, but he don't want nothing bigger than her name. Man, him and that bitch, they were something. He'd leave her. She'd leave him and he'd chase her down. Once he went all the way to New York to get her. She'd fuck someone and he'd knock her around next time he had a few in him. I guess she decides she's had it. She's leaving this time and he surprises her on the way out the door. He's shitfaced and he starts to lay into her. She grabs a kitchen knife and sticks him and that, as they say, is the end of that. Fucked.

__ Got to treat the old lady right.

__ The chicks are funny. Pretty Mac didn't like to do them. I don't mind. You do something private and they want you to touch them while you do it, you know. They'd get interested cuz they were here watching or something. There was a time, not that long ago, this place was hopping, it be full of people here, catching the action, watching the tattooing. But that was tattooing as fashion, and fashions change. You know they want to make tattooing illegal here, same as it already is almost everywhere else. And that's a big step toward killing it, cuz it's fucking hard to make a living at it in a state where it's illegal. Fucking politics. It's fucking politics that's killing punk rock. It was a good scene for a while. It was cool around here, the punkers and the bikers. Sort of the same kind of spirit, you know. (The biker gives a short laugh, the punker a rare smile). But now, what the fuck, no use in bitching.

The visitor felt impotent. He was unsure of his position. He could not sympathize with the lamentations, because he could not empathize with the way of life.

__ You know I stop by Pretty Mac's grave every once in a while. It's in this weird fucking cemetery. His grave is right at the edge, two fucking feet from a McDonalds. The best place to take it in is the parking lot of the McDonalds. I sit there, in the middle of those people eating in their cars.

The mood in the shop darkened. The artist abruptly stopped working.

__ That's it for today.

The biker got up slowly and put on his shirt. He went outside to his bike. The punker followed him. They stood outside, perfectly framed by the front window, apparently talking about motorcycles.

Meanwhile the artist began cleaning his equipment. When he finished he rolled up his pant leg, took off a boot, and sat down on the chair, placing the stockinged foot of his bared leg on the opposite thigh. He turned on the pen and began to work on the inside of his lower leg. The visitor watched in silence, expressionless, until he could make out that the tattoo was of the tattoo pen itself. At this the visitor smiled, a tight smile.

__ When are you going to let me tattoo you?, asked the artist of the visitor.

__ I don't know.

The visitor walked out the door. As he was getting in his car the punker asked him for a ride. The visitor reluctantly agreed.

As they were passing a MacDonalds the punker mentioned that it was the MacDonalds that the artist had mentioned. Pretty Mac was buried in the bordering cemetery. The visitor made a u-turn and pulled into the parking lot. In the back they found the grave. They could just make out the inscription with the help of the overhead lighting of the parking lot.

Producing a bottle from his pocket, the punker lifted it in salute then took a swig. The visitor turned back toward the car, began walking quickly and intently. After a moment or two, the punker noticed his ride was leaving. He started toward the car, but the visitor was pulling out by the time he got there. The punker could have banged on the car or tried to hop in, but something in the visitors look told him not to.

tattoo you

The lawn was as green as

Bright early morning going to be a hot day and the

birds are out chirping and worming. On the lawn is the life and death struggle so artfully represented by the ancients -- a robin has got the worm by the head (or tail, who can tell?) and the tug of war has begun. Meanwhile there's a cacophony in the trees and the bugs are being snagged everywhere.

a cacophony

One is not supposed to identify with any of the personalities

one comes to know on these journeys, at least that's what the leading managers say. It is unhealthy, it is thought, since the ability to influence events must remain outside ones capabilities, and probably more importantly one must not become less than a complete individual in the place where one belongs. Still we know all that and still can't we stay in one place forever, it seems like just drinking someone else's being, a party to their evers, understanding their possibilities and ignoring their results.

The book of course says that they cannot know you are there, that the science is known that the theory is tested that it is impossible under this system that they should know of you, for though of course of necessity you must leave some trace the computation is safe in the sense that your trace is kept well below the mathematical possibility of information content. And of course it was this possibility the discovery of which allowed machine science to enter the glorious age we now enjoy.

you must leave some trace

Pure and ultimate carnage. Mayhem. There are bodies and parts

of bodies everywhere. This is not a sight for the squeamish. This is not a sight for humans, really. Or is it? It was humans that did this to each other. It was a human hand that manufactured each and every weapon, a human finger on the trigger, twas a human mind that designed these mayhem machines. There is nothing quite like a fresh battlefield. Reality is warped one thinks. This is because so much of reality is convention perhaps? So it is an essentially human construction? Is this the source of the confusion? I understand then that my perception of this scene is a product of my brain, that my ability to understand what I am seeing is partly a function of my ability to communicate what I see to others? But what are others? Other brains? There is a brain, or a part of one. The skull is half smashed, and split. Slowly escaping is matter I know from anatomy class to be a brain. How is its notion of reality faring? It is over, I suppose, and cannot be compared to mine? Or are there fragments of it left, arrangements of the cells, neurons fired or not, that still reflect this brains understanding of reality before the bullet hit, a time when it had its own share of reality and was not merely a detail of mine, which is what it seems to have become. In a sense this brains reality is not so far from the true picture? For almost everything in sight, but me, is dead, nonexistent. How better to represent it than as traces of what it recently was, which is in fact what these bodies are, traces of the persons they recently were.

This is why it is hard to be sane here. Not because of my tenuous grip on life -- I am well aware of my mortality, am reminded of it constantly, it is just another fact. It is hard to sane here because of my tenuous grip on reality.

My reality could disappear, evaporate, just as easily as the reality of my fellows did. And I could still be alive. It is a frightening thought.

arrangements of the

Jerry was a collector of happenstance. Lord knows

there was plenty to collect. It began on a cool summer afternoon, with a glass of iced tea. Jerry was fond of ice, and filled the tall glass past the lip before he poured in the tea. He took it into the bedroom, and supped it while reading a magazine article about the descendents of the mutineers of the Bounty, now living on the island Pitcairn. He finished the tea, and set the glass, still stacked with ice, on the night-table. He lay on the bed, reading, feeling a delicious cool breeze from the partly open window. He finished the article, and drifted off for a moment, considering life on an island with only fifty inhabitants. He was startled, and brought back, by a clang in the glass, the noise the result of a sudden resettling of the ice. He looked immediately at the glass. The ice was still by the end of the second it took him to shift his gaze. For a moment he questioned whether he had heard what he knew he heard. But he knew he heard what he had heard. He tried to analyze the glass, the position of the ice, to discern exactly what had happened to create the noise. He could not discover the facts from the present position. He could not even say definitely that the noise had been the settling of the ice instead of, say, the cracking of an individual cube. He noticed that the exact memory of the sound was now fading from his memory.

He looked out the window, no clear thought permeating his countenance. He turned back to the glass. He realized that no explanation for the sound would satisfy him. If it were successfully argued that some cubes had fallen from their position because of some melting, he would still wonder why that position, why that precise moment. He realized that the cause of the noise would not in this case be an explanation for the noise, the noise was not a result but a thing that happened. Accident was not the word, since accident implied, to Jerry, that there was a higher order that might have been appealed to or employed to prevent the happening. This was not the case, essentially not the case; the clang, he believed, was an essential and all pervading fact.

It may seem a weak construence to have that the ice event would or could initiate a significant change in Jerry's life, but it did. It provoked a habit, not a casual nor yet an obsessional habit, but a considerable habit, a habit of observance of the influence of happenstance in life as he knew it. Now forty, married at the time of the ice for twelve years, he reflected often on the luck that had brought he and his wife together. They had met at a bar, on an evening he had almost stayed at home. What if he had? What if he or she had gone somewhere else instead? This was a horrifying thought to him, for he loved his wife very much and the thought of life without her was more than merely distasteful -- it was depressing, an empty and desolate vision, a horror he recoiled from. How much of the rest of his life was a matter of chance? His abilities? His interests? His appearance? His happiness or misery? A good chunk of all of it, it seemed, and to pretend otherwise was, well, to pretend.

The world became a mysterious place to him, or at least it gained a mystery it hadn't had before. He pointed out to his friends, on occasion, the workings of happenstance in their lives, a practice they sometimes appreciated and other times didn't. Not in the least bit religious, he became even more convinced his universe was devoid of a higher order. He did become slightly more sympathetic with religious thought and literature, for he felt he understood the problem even though he disapproved of the solution. A line from Ecclesiastes caught his eye, and he liked to say it to himself, both aloud and in his minds ear: "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all".

universe was devoid of a higher order

Welcome to the machine museum. Don't touch anything. We'll tell you when you can

touch stuff. A tour of the museum should give you some sense of the grand history of the machine -- the history of the mastery of man and woman over what used to be called the elements, over the accidental facts of your environment as we now sometimes say. This history is of course a false history, as all histories are, as we all know. The very act of pointing out an event or object gives an undeserved credence to the notion that that particular event or object is somehow representative of a time and place, whereas the glory of the machine was to teach us that the only proper representation of a time and place is the time and place. Of course we proceed anyway, as we always do, attempting, as we always do, to construct the best falsity we can.

One cannot point to a place in history and say that there is the origination of the machine, any more than one can point to a moment as the origination of man. There are certainly peoples and times we think of as being pre-machine, and certainly we believe ourselves to have the machine, but science is beginning to think that this is a deeper question than was once allowed. It is a growing convention that our status vis-a-vis higher levels is an open question, or at the very least our former confidence in the lack of such levels has been shaken. But this is, of course, a scientific question, and not one that affects our daily lives in significant ways.

In any case, we are proud to say that here at the museum we have the largest and most varied collection of machines extant. All except the very early ones are fully operational, we ask only that you carefully follow the instructions for their use. The museum is essentially self-explanatory -- there are guides at suitable intervals if you get lost or have questions. We hope and trust that you will find your visit pleasurable and educational. Come back and see us again. And by the way, the relic station is just behind me, for those who like to arrange for a token of their experience.

a token of their experience

Is there such a thing as a normal day? Is there a day

when nothing remarkable happens? Even in this little spot? Say, within a three mile radius of here? Well, certainly not today.

Not today with the clouds the way they were. Some people were tempted to stop along the highway, some even did, just to stand outside and swivel their heads about, trying to get it all in somehow. First there were low charcoal tufts, so low that they seemed to barely clear the trees. So low that they were in reach, it seemed. They moved, changed shape, alive they were, though slow, not like clouds in a severe storm. These close ones were very small, and sparse, sort of like dark cotton balls strewn here and there. Next was a middle layer of bright white and greys, especially bright at the edges. Some of the more massive ones tended to dark gray at their bases, but were nowhere as dark as the little cotton balls. These middle clouds moved with some rapidity, curling, breaking up, joining together, making huge shadows on the land, that moved across the highway and the trees faster than the speeding cars on the road, or so it appeared. The third layer was made up of clouds that seemed to be quite far away indeed, at an almost impossible altitude. They too were sparse compared to the middle layer, though for a time they were quite prominent across the middle of the sky, arranged in clearly defined straight rows, almost unnatural looking, rolling, so they might have been described as rolled up carpets laid parallel on an invisible floor in the sky.

Then as one rounded the on-ramp, up the hill to the broad pavement, where of a sudden you could see across the valley, then in addition to these three remarkable layers, in addition to the remarkable spring greens in the remarkable yellow light, one saw those remarkable rays, used in old paintings to indicate the presence of God. A painted scene it was, except that one was in it and did all one could do the drink the colors and light and shades of a world suddenly even more remarkable than it had been a remarkable moment before.

Otherwise it was an entirely normal day.

With a machine in one time and place is all

Otherwise it was an entirely normal day.

time and all places.

Did she use this scene as irony? As black or

With a machine in one time and place is all time and all places.

bleak humor? Everyone has certainly seen glimpses of it , or at least a reenactment, reenactments are so popular, why? Because one can get it to look exactly as it should, instead of the way it did? Rarely is the original scene seen in its full ironic glory. So is this why she includes it? Does it, after all this time, from such a distance, still speak to us? Is it not simplistic? Is there a person now who could suffer from such base self-satisfaction? Is not the problem now that our weaknesses are so deeply hidden? That in our constant self-vigilance we have only made catacombs of our personalities.? But then again it is always easy to recognize ones weaknesses after one has found them.

the distance becomes greater

What the beginner is always suprised to learn is that most

of everything is nothing, nothing at all. There is a vast emptiness between electron and nucleus, as they used to say. An emptiness so wide that if you were the electron you would barely know your siblings. And from there to the next atom? Well, most places, it is a long way, a way so far as to be considered forever, in relative terms. Molecules are a tighter bunch, as are cells tighter still, but at these levels it is still usually emptiness, as it is usually emptiness at all levels. Now of course the machine can be made to help us here, and for most people, most users, it is a thing done without them even considering it. The machine simply continues if there is nothing there, so to speak. But even if there is something there, aren't most somethings nothing at all? What are endless rows of identical, say in a salt cube? What is there to a level that displays no discernable difference all the way to the relative horizon? What the beginner must come to terms with is that these are the conditions on most levels, most places, most times.

Reality is vast, and has in it great diversity, but its dimension is so, and the redundance is such, that the unaware and the imperceptive are likely to see only what they have seen before.

Unfortunately, this is as true of higher levels, of human levels even, as it is of every other level.

She sits alone, as is usual these days. Her art

this is as true of higher levels,

is her life, whether

her life is art is a question she contemplates continually. Simplicity she worships. She ponders her identity, trying to understand its place. To do so she cuts all extraneous ties. She tries not to think of herself in relation to anything or anybody else. She is trying to draw an uncomplicated picture. She positions herself at the machine. She puts herself into a void, a vast nothingness, her best frame, her most honest frame, she hopes, could well be no frame at all. For the longest time and place, there is nothing. Then she notes, only, she is

here.

here

being Mexican, and the boss You are old, old man, your legs hurt, your eyes water, your fingers open only with effort,

like prying open a crate. Still the night is not so cold anymore, it seems to be getting lighter beyond those hills -- dawn is on the way. You have your life (unfortunately), a pocket full of gold (if one must live a life with gold is a vast improvement over one without), and your memories. (Yes I know these memories, all I am are those memories, an old man on a night road with his share of self pity, closely guarded, and the memories, they are burnt in my mind, and I am long too old to let any one of them be replaced).

You no longer have your horse, old man. You no longer have your belt or your watch. They rid you of them merrily, laughing when they jumped you, and you, you did a superb job of looking surprised, though you knew it would be impossible for you to appear afraid, there is no faking the scent of the scared, you instead stared at them wild-eyed, an old man losing his mind. They laughed and jeered you, pulling you off the horse roughly, and the cross-eyed one put his boot to your chest to keep you down. Give us your money, old man. And you wisely just stared at them, trying to feel humiliated that you might be more convincing. They fished your pockets and found the two gold coins you had put in a pocket inside your jacket, put there so that they would not be completely disappointed. They took your belt because it was new and beautiful, a gift from your daughter that you had not wanted to wear for the reason that it might be stolen, but you could not leave it and insult her love for you. They took your watch because it was also new and beautiful, and though the watch was a gift from your son-in-law, you are not so sad to be without it, its time was not your time. You felt this when he gave it you, but you did not say so, for though he was your son-in-law he was a good man.

They kicked you while you were on the ground, and you tasted the dust, which was nothing new to you, you have been eating dust forever. But they did not hurt you, because you must have seemed to them frail, which you are not. You may die sometime soon, old man, but until that moment you will walk straight and true, for though your legs hurt they could still carry two of you.

They laughed and laughed, laughed at their own poor joke. Did you think we wanted your opinion on the weather? (No, I didn't, though I gave it because you asked). Did you think we wanted to hear your story? (No, I didn't, which is why I told you nothing but lies). Did you think we were just a wholesome little group of traveling men, who hailed you and covered these miles with you because we were interested in your company? (No, I didn't, I saw you in the distance, I am old but my eyes are good, four men, traveling slowly as if to save their horses, but without baggage. Where would four men without baggage be going so slowly? So I knew what you were and what you wanted. And while behind a bend I hid my gold in the brush and then continued on, waiting for you to approach me). Did you ever imagine that your merry traveling companions would rob you? (I only wanted you to get on with it, for every meter we covered was a meter I must recover I survived your company. And the further we went, the more I knew you would not kill me, for I knew you were waiting for the spot furthest from town).

The horse is not such a loss, old man. Though you loved to ride in your youth, and you still enjoy looking a horse over, and you remember a thousand moments at full gallop, on the way home for the evening, the sweat of the horse making his coat glisten in the setting sun. Now walking is easier. It does not matter how quickly or slowly you travel, you are going to no particular place to arrive at no particular time. In the day you walk from shade tree to shade tree, from habit sometimes evaluating to yourself the land or its caretakers, and you are kinder than you would be if they were your family or friends. One sees more walking than riding, and one better understand how far one has gone. (Besides, I walk smoother than a horse, for I do not bounce on my legs, and though I have spent half my life in the saddle, I am still sore if I ride all day).

This air is sweet, is it not, old man? You know this air, you have tasted it every morning of your life. Will you send a letter this day old man? Or the next? Soon? At all? Ever again? (I have sent plenty, too many already perhaps. I never intended that it become something they or I expected. I only wanted them not to worry, and not to search for me uselessly. I sent a couple more, just so they would understand. I would not return. I chose this, and it will suit me until the end or until I have forgotten).

You will never forget, old man. Your memories are all you have. And they are not real, they are just an old mans musings, pictures of a past that might have been, freshly colored with every pass through, a freshly painted carnival. (I do not deny that. I myself am the barker to myself, describing it all in flowery terms that would be embarrassing to one not under the spell). You know then that these pictures are not your life, these memories you live for, they are a cheap imitation of what you think they should be. (That is not so. I cannot remember the first day I saw her. I have no notion of what she looked like on our wedding day. I do not recall the days our children were born. I do not remember the infinite number of Church days, saint days, weddings, christenings, though I am sure and I know in my heart that in her fine clothes she was a woman to behold. The things that are clear in my mind have no date to them. It is her across the table to me, what age is she? What does she wear? What could these questions mean? She and I were together for forty years, never apart -- she is twenty, she is sixty, she is every year in between. She changes her clothes with her age, I suppose. She rises and turns, her back, her hair, how many times did I see them? Not enough. How many times did she smile at me when I entered the house? Not enough. How many times did I lie next to her? Not enough. Thousands and thousands and thousands for each of these, yet I think I remember each, they seem so few).

Old man, is there not life all around you? Do you not walk on a road where today others will walk? Do you not stop in villages of people, farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen, women and children? Old man, not so many days ago, did you not pass a place that might have been your own? Well kept, it was, with a look of pride and industry. Did you not pause in the shade to gaze upon it? And did not a young girl bring you food and drink, the matron inside thinking you a weary traveler? Could not that young girl have been your granddaughter, and did you not drink her shy smile with the water and wine she brought you? (Pretty she was, and polite too. And yes she might have been my granddaughter, and yes that might have been my ranch. But it was not my ranch, and the matron inside was not my wife because she is gone. And so that young girl will be someone to those who do and will care for her, but she can be nothing to me. I cannot live in that world without my Maria. I cannot go back to my ranch because it is not my ranch if she is not there. And so I am heading north).

And so you are heading north and not south, old man.

Could not that young girl have been your granddaughter

In the sun they moved as slowly as worms.

A game of their own invention. Standing to sitting, sitting to standing, walk form the table around the tree and back, pretend to lift a cup from the table: all a freezing dance. So slow. The game had no object but their amusement.

Pietro, too old for this now, played only to appease Maria. Aloof, adult, fifteen, still he played well. Maria twinkled and giggled.

Maria-Trieste watched, unobserved. First she smiled, then she darkened and stepped toward them.

__ What are you doing?

__ Playing a game, Mama.

Pietro, whose turn it had been, slid quickly to the bench, looking away as Maria answered.

__ What do you call the game? Her eyes to Pietro, ears to Maria.

__ Nasta, Mama.

Maria-Trieste, at the edge of condemnation, found no words. What can one say? The cruelty of children.

Nasta. Old Nasta. Blind Nasta. Slow Nasta. Nasta who never speaks anymore, unless spoken to. Nasta in black, always. Nasta whose skin is as wrinkled as the rooster’s crop. Nasta who has not left the house since the death of her daughter Maria. Nasta, Maria-Trieste's grandmother. Old Nasta. Blind Nasta. Slow Nasta. Everyone waits for Nasta to die.

Two years ago Pietro and Garcia sat on a village wall, sunning as a spring morning turned to summer dust. There was sound before sight, a growl and a whine pushing its way up the valley. Then they saw them below. One green, the other grey. Fine plumes rose from the wheels. Finally the motorcars completed the loop and rumbled slowly into the village. They stopped in front of Vincente's. The drivers stepped down and patted the road from their clothes. Pietro and Garcia laughed when they let their huge spectacles hang at their necks. They looked like owls. Vincente brought out wine, and while the drivers drank Pietro and Garcia touched the hot metal of the fenders and the hard rubber of the tires. (Hard and soft, said Garcia, like a snake). The motormen bought five bottles each, and Vincente packed them in boxes, separating them straw. They turned around and headed back down the valley. Pietro followed the tire tracks a long way.

Maria-Trieste called Pietro and Garcia for dinner. On the table already were garish fruits and a twist loaf with a crust hard enough to cut gums. Maria brought Nasta. Chairs scuffed the floor as seats were filled.

Gabriel, Maria-Trieste's husband, father of Pietro, Garcia, and Maria, smiled upon his dominion.

__ May the Lord bless this meal and all those who partake of it.

__ Amen.

__ Amen.

There were muttered requests for dishes out of reach. There were casual queries about the morning’s happenings. There was the inanimate talk of utensils against plates and serving dishes.

And then a miracle occurred. Nasta spoke without prompting.

__ I want to go for a ride in an automobile.

There was no reply. Pietro wondered how the idea had come to her. Certainly she had never seen an automobile. She is not, he thought, as removed as she seems.

The silence was long. She repeated herself, quietly.

__ I want to go for a ride in an automobile.

This demanded a reply.

__ Someday I will take you for a ride in an automobile, and it will be my automobile, said Pietro, remembering a promise he made to himself as he and Garcia stood in the village watching the dust settle.

__ That is kind of you, Pietro, but I don't know if I can wait until someday.

__ Perhaps you could go today, said Gabriel, meeting the stunned stares of his wife and children with the most innocent of smiles.

Nasta only nodded.

The end of dinner began with the usual tradition. Maria led Nasta to her seat on the porch. The rest of the family looked to Gabriel, perhaps expecting an explanation. They received only commands, delivered in a voice low enough that Nasta on the porch could have no chance of hearing him.

__ Pietro, pick the best of the old stuffed chairs in the basement. Saw off its legs so that the bottom is flat. Then bring it to your mother so she and Maria can restuff and recover it. Also gather together all the grain bags you can find. And put the ball of twine with them.

He did not have to say that this should all be accomplished without Nasta knowing.

__ Garcia and I are going on an errand, we will be back in a couple hours.

Up the hill to Carlos'. The sun stung like a whip. The horses glistened a hundred yards from Gabriel's tch tch. Garcia itched with questions he knew not to scratch.

At the crest a stand of quebrancho. Carlos' drive; wheat to the left, maize to the right. Carlos was in back of the house, architect to four Indians laying stone for a new shed. Shoeless and shirtless, their rust skins were light and dark, streaked with dirt and sweat.

Gabriel and Carlos strode along the edge of the maize, crushing clumps in their hands and pointing down rows. At the end of the field they stopped, and Gabriel began to speak with purpose, his hands shaping, pushing and pulling the air. Carlos shook his head with a smile while he spoke, laughed when he finished, then nodded in assent.

Gabriel sent Garcia to the shed for grease. Carlos told him where to look. When he returned, Gabriel asked him to grease the wagon.

__ Make it as quiet as you can.

Gabriel and Carlos walked over to the well, and detached the hoses from Carlos' new pump.

Pietro sat comfortable in the pile of grain sacks, watching dust specks swim in sun rays, the barn roof a magnificent shade.

The greasing finished, Garcia led the wagon to the well. Gabriel, Carlos, and a couple Indians lifted the pump to the seat. Then they all drifted to the shade of the huge quebrancho, taking seats at the table there. Carlos brought out wine and for an hour they stayed, telling stories and jokes.

The ride down the hill was a cheery one, red of the wine in the faces of Garcia and the Indians. Approaching the house Gabriel silenced them.

Nasta had gone inside to rest. Maria and Pietro were waiting on the porch, the redone chair between them. Gabriel motioned that they were to bring it to him.

__ Where are the grain bags? (A whisper).

__ In the barn. (A whispered reply).

__ Good. Maria, please have Nasta ready to go in an hour.

They circled around back to pick up the grain bags. Pietro threw them up, a few bags a toss. Gabriel stopped him halfway through the pile, and asked him to bring the twine, and also a hammer and some nails. That done, Pietro climbed in the back and sat, perched on the end rail, smoothing the burlap scratches on his arms.

They turned left onto the road, heading towards the village, the lowering sun squinting their eyes. The road this way was flat awhile, then a slight incline.

At the bend they pulled up in the shade. Gabriel had Garcia and Pietro unhitch the horses and tether them to a tree. Then he instructed the Indians and the boys to roll up the bags as tight as they could, and use the twine to keep them rolled that way. He and Carlos began nailing the chair to the lid of the storebox.

Maria's chin was on the back of her right hand, her righthand on her left hand, her left hand on the kitchen table. Through the window she watched the events of the yard, events which were, to all reasonable inquiry, non-existent. The two panes she stared through had smooth warps: one was a riverbed with a bend, running from bottom left to top right; the other had a point that was the center of a basin. Everything fell into it.

With twine Gabriel and Carlos lashed the rolled bags to the wheels, padding the iron tires. This finished, they all shared another bottle of wine. Then Gabriel instructed the Indians and the boys to remove their boots. They threw them in the back of the wagon.

__ Now there is to be no talking whatsoever, except by Carlos and myself. Why don't you all take your places. It will not be a long ride, just over the top of Carlos' hill and back.

Carlos laughed and started the pump. Gabriel motioned to the human horses to begin toward the house.

As they approached the house Gabriel asked Carlos to open the throttle a bit. Nasta sat in her chair on the porch. Over the noise of the pump Gabriel called:

__ Are you ready, Grandma?

Nasta nodded and began to rise. The men marveled at how slowly she moved. Maria and Maria-Trieste helped her down the stairs. Gabriel lifted her into the chair. She sat, as she always did, with her hands folded in her lap.

__ Carlos is our driver, Grandma.

__ Good afternoon, Nasta, said Carlos.

Nasta smiled. Gabriel, seated seated next to Nasta on the storage box, signaled the men to start up the shallow hill.

It was hard work pulling the wagon. The harness straps were smooth, soft, wet from the sweat of their hands. The pace was a fast trot.

As they came to the top of the hill they broke into a full run. Carlos opened the throttle a bit more. The other side of the hill was a much steeper pitch, about a hundred yards long. About a third of the way down, the horses realized they were no longer pulling, and soon it was difficult matching the speed of the wagon. In another twenty yards the wagon was out of their control. The two front runners simultaneously let go of the harness and jumped to the side. The next two, the remaining of the Indians, followed them. Garcia, on the left, handed his strap up to Carlos, who leaned over to grab it so that he could hold the harness frame up to keep it from catching on the ground or in the wheels. Pietro, on the other side, would have done the same, but the pump was in the way. He instead did what only a fifteen-year-old could have done: he held the harness strap close to the pole in one hand, grabbed the foot bar of the seat with the other, and swung underneath the wagon, placing his feet on an understrut. Carlos glanced at Gabriel. They were thinking the same thing: there was no way to steer the wagon. Their hope was that the wagon would stay in the road, which was straight, guided by the bevel the years of travel had dug.

Nasta rode with her eyes closed, holding her faint smile. Gabriel knew that if the wagon crashed there would be very little he could do to protect her. Carlos grinned and opened the throttle all the way. The four of them, Gabriel, Carlos, old Nasta, and Pietro underneath, looked ahead and waited.

At the bottom of the hill the wagon was still in the middle of the road. Their speed decreased rapidly, and they were out of danger as quickly as they had gotten into it. Pietro hopped down and steered the wagon around a slight bend. They were almost stopped by the time Garcia and the Indians caught up to them, cheering as they came running. Gabriel turned abruptly when he heard them and made violent signs for them to be quiet. He turned to old Nasta to see if she had noticed, and found that his concern was unnecessary. Her chin was in her chest. He reached over and felt her neck. There was no pulse. He put his arms around her. Carlos turned off the pump.

guided by the bevel the years

The boy was asked: why do you throw eggs on Halloween? The boy

answered: Because they're cheaper than tomatoes. This seems like a joke, but it is and it is not. The inquisitor would have done better to ask: why do you throw things on Halloween?, which, we assume, was the question he was interested in. This question, though, is outside the boy’s sense of reality. The boy throws eggs on Halloween because that is what he does -- well, that is not quite right, as he points out, he would gladly throw tomatoes on Halloween if they were less expensive. What he does is, he throws things that are messy and explode on impact on Halloween. (Thank god, for example, that he does not throw rocks).

This is one of hardest concepts, for me anyway, to truly get a hold of. The boys understanding is precisely a world in which things are thrown on Halloween. The question as to why this is may have meaning for us, but not for the boy. Perhaps this is like asking us: why do you think the way you do?

Is this an unanswerable question? That is, the only answer is just a reiteration of how we think?

This brings us up against one of the central questions about the machine, face to face with one of the central facets of machine theory. We say: if a question, to be answered requires the complete system, then it is a meaningless question. I have tried for many years to get this right. I have not succeeded. There is always the bastard’s question: Doesn't the complete answer to any question require the whole system? This is not trivial. There is a very slippery slope in these parts. In this area, as in much of education, we tell convenient lies until we think the student is mature enough to approach the truth. What does it say to you that I am supposed to be your teacher and I, as yet, lack sufficient confidence in this procedure to tell you sufficiently convincing lies?

throw eggs on Halloween

Halloween night here, a truly sad and bizarre time. What

is the difference between the regulars when they're in costume and the regulars when they're not? Hard to say, except that they are perhaps a bit more presentable in costume. It's the only day of the year that they might be confused with citizens. The costumes are what you might expect, plus a couple that you might not. The emphasis is on the dark, the underside, the monstrous and the evil. There is a spot of humor here and there, and a technological innovation or two, but the tone is set by the fellow who walks in with a blue face, a crooked neck, and a noose as a necktie. He has a couple beers with friends, then throws the rope over a beam (the place is done of course in early rustic), and ties it off on a post.

__ That's not funny, my man. Could be dangerous.

__ Not to worry. I've got it rigged so I'm supported by a brace that takes the weight.

__ If you say so.

But the objectioner still keeps an uneasy watch. The hanged man steps up on a chair and gently lets the rope take his weight. He doesn't say anything but seems to find the arrangement to his satisfaction. He sways slowly, not speaking, but his eyes dart about the room.

Some new customers come into the bar. the sight of the hanged man is a pauser, to say the least. The hanged man is offered drinks a couple times, but just shakes his head.

The table just to his left are his closest acquaintances present. They glance up at him occasionally. But then a sort of Gypsy witch brings out a set of tarot cards, and the attention is focused on the cards. She begins to turn them over, seeking the fortune of a pirate. One might think that a pirates costume would be a rather tame choice for a member of this group, but this fellow, through the offices of a motorcycle accident, can actually wear a peg leg. He also usually wears an earring and has long hair and a scraggly beard, so it was only the eyepatch and the tattered seaman's blouse that had to be added to complete the picture.

__ Well, it doesn't look good, I'm afraid.

__ So tell me what else is new, said the pirate. Why should the future be any fucking better than the past has been?

__ Here, here, said one of technological costumes, he was lit up in several places, including what appeared to be coils of neon, some kind of charged luminous gas or liquid looped about his arms, legs and torso. His hat was a stack of decreasing cylinders as ones gaze rose, each with a light that seemed to run around it, actually tiny bulbs flashing in series.

__ What the fuck is with 'here, here', says the pirate. This isn't a fucking prep school, in case you hadn't noticed.

__ What's wrong with you anyway?

__ Goddamn Halloween is all. Life is weird enough as it is, without a goddamn day devoted to it.

__ You seem to fit in okay.

__ Oh fuck you.

The hanged man's eyes are not so swift now, though he's still looking about. A loner at the bar glances over at the hanged man for the fortieth time. It was unsettling the way he slowly swayed. Phrases kept popping into his mind, like 'twist slowly, slowly in the wind'. But something else was bugging him. There was something happening here that he had seen somewhere before. The tarot cards in the corner, the pirate -- some of the others didn't quite fit -- but there was something familiar nonetheless. Then all of a sudden it comes to him. He has read this. In Burroughs. William Burroughs come to life. What a horrible thought, he thinks. He turns around to take a good look, get it all in, and he confirms his recognizance. It is Burroughs, no doubt, and he looks to check the hanged mans fly, but the hanged man has twisted around so that his back is to the bar. But the smoke, the characters, the, well, the hanged man, where else could he be?

This opens up new vistas for the man at the bar. What could this lead to? If you could pass through a door and be in a reality of someone else's making? Made by writers, of all people. Of those who ought to be made God, certainly they must be last in line. Lord knows one worries everyday that one might pass through a door into a reality of ones own making, having finally given up hope of understanding the one that Whomever made.

__ You know, you're really bugging me with this bit. It's not that funny any more. I'm not sure it ever was funny.

So says the pirate to the hanged man, still hanging. The hanged man didn't reply, he just hung there. His eyes had begun to blur a bit, though in this light this was not apparent to the group at the table. The pirate took the hanged mans silence as a commitment to the continuance of the ruse. This was true, or false, depending on whether there can be such a thing as involuntary commitment in this context. The harness that the rope was attached to was constricting his breathing pretty considerably by this time. He wasn't sure if he could talk, so he tried, at least he thought he tried. He had had a few before he came in, so the alcohol together with the lack of oxygen was having a disorienting effect. Nothing came out. No sound. He just hang there looking real cool, and real dead. So thought the man at the bar, but he was premature. He turns back to his beer. And an argument begins at the table over the interpretation of the tarot cards. The pirate joins in for a while, just for practice, but soon loses interest.

Sometime in the next five minutes, the hanging man died. He perished of suffocation, the result of the constriction of his chest. It is the method the huge constricting snakes use to kill their prey.

It was the pirate who noticed that all was not right with the hanged man. He left the table to talk to the hanged man. He looked him in the eyes, and saw that they were not moving or reacting in any way. He untied him as quickly as he could, and when they started cardio pulmonary resuscitation the man at the bar knew he was no longer in a Burroughs book, but in that special kind of hell made by a higher being.

a Burroughs book, but in that special kind of hell

the work of self preservation

(across the street from the bar)

The sunlight on that chair, really, it's beginning to fade on the top

there, I'm sure of it, even if Sharon said she couldn't see any fade, I certainly can, at my age with my eyes. What's needed is a heavier curtain there of course, but then it's dark enough in here as it is I suppose, might as well have the drapes closed if the curtain was any heavier, I suppose.

Imagine, I can remember my mothers dresser. I won't embarrass myself by trying to think of what year that would have been. But think of things then. What her table was like, imagine what those items would bring to an antique dealer -- and we weren't rich, oh we had enough all right, but just those everyday things from back then, well you see them everywhere fetching high prices. I used to have one of her hairbrushes I think, though did I give it to Sharon, I intended to, or is it still around here somewhere? Maybe when I'm up and about again I'll poke around a little, if I find it I could give it to Sharon.

Not that much longer now till the holidays, Sharon and Mike and the kids, they'll be all over the place. But it all goes by so quickly. They're all here, then they're all gone. No time to talk to everyone. I always feel badly that I can't remember what's going on with all of them. They sometimes seem hurt, or impatient with me because of it. Of course it all seems so important to them. Now missus that's a terrible attitude. Of course it's important to them, it's their business and it ought to be your business too. But the fact is that sometimes they act as if no-one has ever lived before, no-one understands this modern world. Well sometimes I feel like coming right out and telling them that there's nothing new under the sun.

This chair isn't as comfortable as the old one. That's all there is to it. I'll have to tell Sharon that. I'm sorry if it hurts her feelings, or if she thinks I'm ungrateful. I'm not. But the truth is the truth. That's what I learned. That's what I tried to teach her. I don't know why they wanted to get me another wheelchair anyway. The other one was perfectly good. And I don't intend to be in this thing forever. Of course who ever thinks they're going to be in a wheelchair? I certainly never thought so. My mother was up and around until the day before she died. That's what everybody always said. It was true too. Though she had her spells. She was a strong woman but she needed her sleep. When she didn't get her sleep she could be something. That's what my father said. It was true too. Most of what he said was true, I suppose. Though Willard thought he had a habit of extending things a bit. Is that what Willard called it? I've forgotten now. He had some nice way of saying it. But I don't know. I know Willard caught him out on a limb once or twice, though of course Willard was too polite to say anything to my father directly, but those I think were just everyday exaggerations, the kind of thing everybody says now and then. I think most of the time he was right on the money.

He was proud of his family. He always used to tell us that we'd be a comfort to him in his old age. I think we were too. Though he didn't have much of an old age, really. He was still a young man at sixty-two. He didn't have any infirmaries, and though those attacks had him in the hospital for three weeks or so, well other than that I don't think he was sick a day in his life. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I had let it go twenty years ago, like my parents did. I'd never say such a thing to Sharon, of course. She'd get angry at me. She'd think I was looking for sympathy. Maybe I am. Maybe I deserve a little. But it might have been better. What kind of life is this? An old woman alone. Sharon says I'm not alone. She says I have her and Mike and the kids, and I have aides and I have friends like Milly. But Milly can't really get out anymore either. And the aides, well they're nice, but they're being paid to be nice. Sharon and Mike, when they come, which isn't all that often -- don't I sound just like an old woman complaining -- they don't stay very long. I realize that it's quite a drive and they have their own lives to lead, but I am alone, I am alone. I am afraid sometimes. I am afraid that something will happen to me and I will not be able to help myself I will not be able to get to the phone and what will happen? I don't want that to happen. I don't want to die alone. There, I've said it. I don't want to die alone. I am afraid of that. I am afraid ... what will I think ... what could I do. I guess it is a lonely thing, but I am afraid to do it alone.

of the pull. My

(Across the street from the bar).

partner and I, we're cosmic seismologists. Not as easy as you might think. Sure we got all the fancy equipment and all that. But still there's something to it. You've got to...

In the old days it was simpler. My grandfather had the job -- I can still remember his stories. He was probably the reason I got into this thing. Of course in those days they weren't looking for the kinds of things we are. Their only concern was physical activity. We look for the vortices, the hotspots, of all constructs.

the vortices

I could walk on the other side of the street. In fact I will

walk on the other side of the street. With that he starts to cross diagonally. But there is no break on the traffic heading north and he is forced to retreat to the west side by the threat of an oncoming bus. This could be the decisive battle, he realizes. But he doesn't attempt to cross again, instead walks by the lighting store, the music shop, the laundromat, all the while drawing closer, knowing that it would ever more difficult to get past the door, since now he was going to pass not two feet from it. He tried to convince himself to walk faster, hoping that momentum might carry him through, but this failed. He detested walking quickly under any circumstances, and he was uncomfortable letting his weakness dictate his behavior.

He looked up and noticed a group of three standing on the corner. He didn't recognize them. Nor could he discern if they were coming or going from the bar, the bar that black hole of a green door was right behind them. What he did know was that walking around them would mean either going into the street, a weird thing to do, or passing literally within a foot of the black hole. He put his head down and resolved to give it his best.

There was never any doubt, really. Better men than he, he reasoned, had succumbed. All it took was the slightest pause in front of the door, and before he knew it he was in and nodding to Neil who was drawing the usual -- the cheapest draft in the house.

Four big gulps. He didn't know a soul in the place, other than Neil. Of course it was early yet, but he had no intentions of staying until it was late. He put the three-quarter full pint down on the bar and went out the door to the variety store a couple shops down, needing a newspaper. He shot out of the variety store, and felt his orbit carry him right back into the hole, whence he could stay for all time if he chose, never again emitting light.

She was sort of pretty, and caught his eye. Long dark hair, big eyes, not sure about the color, since he was never sure of eye color, thinking he was in a sense color blind at night, though that had no bearing on the issue, since it was as bright as noon in the tropics in the bar. She had a small mouth and a slightly hooked nose. He searched for her name, though he knew he didn't have it. He caught her eye and nodded to her. She smiled back, sort of smiled, the fastest smile in the east, never showing teeth, gone so fast the image was more of a grimace than a smile. He felt they had talked here once, though he couldn't recall the circumstances or even the tiniest bit of the conversation.

A couple more gulps. He finished the pint and gestured for another. He took another look at her in the mirror. A neuron fired. A friend had told him a little story about her. The friend was talking to her one night, said he approached her because he felt sorry for her, alone in a place like this. Bullshit, of course. But in any case he was only hitting on her in the mildest sort of way, if at all. The conversation rapidly turned sour. She had watched him, she said, for many nights, and there was no doubt about it, he was really fucked up.

__ I'm fucked up?, the friend protested, she sits by herself all night long, maybe three or four nights a week, stays till closing time every fucking time, never talks to anyone, someone tries to be nice to her and she hands them their head, and I'm fucked up? I'm fucked up? ... Well of course I'm fucked up. But who is she to say anything about anybody else?

The reminiscence brought a smile to Teatrain's lips, and he lifted his glass to her in the mirror, a gesture she didn't seem to see, though she was looking in the direction of his reflection. He knew he would have nothing to do with her except in the case of dire emergency.

He drifted into the frequency of the conversation between the occupants of the stools next and next but one to his right.

__ I don't know what to think, was she.. I mean did ... you tell me. We leave here and go back to her place, it's only late afternoon, she's got to meet her boyfriend later.

__ So why does she want you to come with her?

__ That's the question. Anyway we're at her place and she says she's got to get changed, she goes into the bedroom but leaves the door open the returns with a blouse, then gets out an ironing board and iron and I have another beer and she irons the blouse. Then she takes off the shirt she has on, then off comes some kind of underthing and she's standing there for a minute, and they're just there, while she irons something she must have missed on the blouse. She kind of looks at me and smiles, but what do you say? Nice tits?

__ Nice to see you?

They both chuckled, one ordered another round.

__ Who's paying for this?

__ Hey, I've got money. I've been working for three weeks now.

__ Congratulations

They chuckled again.

__ So then what happened?

__ What?

__ The tits.

__ Oh yeah. Then she puts her shirt on and says she's got to go.

__ And that's it?

__ Yeah, that's it. Except now it seems like I run into her all the time. And every time I see her all I can think about is those tits. What beautiful tits.

Teatrain's acid gaze returned to the mirror. There he was.

Tweed coat and hat, bad color tie, unremarkable shirt and trousers, short beard, no mustache, drunken eyes, Bernard Littleton, Visiting Professor of Philosophy, stood, arm resting on the bar, fingertips resting on a half empty half full pint glass, telling Auslander the very same story he had told him but two days earlier under similar circumstances. The story was not a bad one, but neither was it a rich one, its worth was in the unfamiliarity of its plot, its market value to Auslander therefore none. His first reaction upon recognition of the story was one of pain, anticipating the requirement of feigned surprise. But this quickly metamorphosized, as is so often the case with pain, into fascination. The change was then aided by a change in Auslander's conceptual construct, his focus shifted from the story to a search for the cause of Littleton's untoward repetition. The possibilities were many. But they revolved around two foci: the deterioration of Littleton's mental health, and his inappropriate retainment of motor skills at times of extreme inebriation -- which caused him to appear less drunk than he actually was.

(To Auslander Conrad's "the horror, the horror" was an exotic farce. Kurtz was far too interesting to be horrible. The subject of Auslander's horror was the cancerous mediocrity that threatened him everywhere).

He escapes preliminarily, though there is a problem in estimating his energy, so it is unknown if he is on a true escape orbit, or merely on an ellipse with large eccentricity. Six blocks to the square and he is still moving forward. His ear is caught by a man who is standing on what appears to be an actual soapbox. He stands there a minute, listening not to the meanings but the sounds of the words.

a man ... actual soapbox ... the words

Can we become a discriminating public? Will we no longer accept

talk-through, walk-through walls, shifty foundations, motel amenities? I don't know.

We are a narrowminded and limited people. We know nothing of other cultures, and little of ourselves. I have checked with the American Society of Social Scientists, the Society of Incisive and Opportune Prosodists, the American Library Association (everyone knows how smart librarians are), and various branches of the United States Government. I have compiled a list for those investigating the humanoid fauna of the fine land. A short selection will provide a taste. We are a group of subgroups. You will find a thud of football players, a mass of construction workers, a dust of academics, a nada of skeptics, a fortune of stockbrokers, a hack of smokers, a honk of New Yorkers, a miracle of Catholics, a peace of Buddhists, a question of Jews, a formality of Wasps, a formaldehyde of undertakers, a system of programmers, a lifetime of bores, a wetness of lovers, an embarrassment of poor people, you see the idea. We are everywhere and nowhere. We are and are not, we are a collection of individuals, and we are less than our sum.

And we are failing. We are failing. I'm not a doomsayer or a moralist, not a provocateur nor an evangelist, and I'm sure as shit not an apologist. But I know mediocrity when I see it. And I see it all right. I'm drowning in it. Now my failure alone I could easily brook (well perhaps not so easily), for though I possess a formidable ego, I am a healthy voyeur. If only appearances were up to par, I could easily back the team -- I've always been a sucker for a slick package. I have no juvenile inhibitions that blind me to the occasional beneficence of duplicity and deceit.

But no. There is sterility in our politicians, a cheapness in our literature, a baseness in our relations; there is a smugness in our pity, a self-importance in our opinions, a fatuousness in our claims to knowledge; there is an impotence on our fury, an impotence in our most determined efforts. Concede the poverty to the leftists, concede the plenty to the pigs, concede your fate to whom?

I am not stupid enough to consider myself fortunate in this malaise. But I'm not smart enough to make a business out of it. Can it be right that an earnest soul makes me sick to my stomach?

an earnest soul

Across the street the professor is trying to

make a point, and his object just isn't getting it.

__ It is a simple calculation. Two or three lines.

__ I don't see how it could be. One needs to ...

But the professor is now wiping 'mushroom quiche -- $4.95' off the board with his coat sl