Section 0028

     Nothing was sacred to her. The next morning, we went down to breakfast not feeling so hot.
     “Alas!” one cries, “and yet alas again!”
     I cannot tell you yet how beautiful it is, what it means. But when I was young, where I lived was mostly farmland, rolling fields, rushing creeks when it rained, thick woods, and hundred-year-old stone barns. Fires are now a rare occurrence…[23] They no doubt are part of the rite.

     Early that afternoon we came across one of the strangest things I had ever seen: a hundred yards or so up from the shoreline was an abandoned caboose on a small stretch of railroad tracks that disappeared into the sand in both directions. Then again, maybe the concoction is so strange it's actually brilliant. The mist quickly turns to a drizzle and I hope that it won't rain any harder. I am not sure whether to regard this as a slight, a mercy, or merely a pragmatic consideration of what we all think we might be able to handle together. 


     The gun rides beside the heap.     


     We stepped up into the main hall of the temple and inspected the painting of hell. How can people believe that for years I've fought against motes of dust or dirt-attracting floors or bleached white sheets to perfection when a few hours later the motes, the dirt, the stains return to remind me of the uselessness of it all?


     The chasm widened dizzyingly. The setting of these dreams and stories became critical. That sound was what pulled me away from the radio. Briggs, who had been listening, looked up thoughtfully.

     Given sight and the power to move and handle things, sounds greatly enrich the human feeling for space.

     Had she not been forewarned, Elisabeth would doubtless have become provocative. With bells on her ankles and rings on her toes, the dancing girl does not need cast and accompaniments to her dreary measures. We remain still and wait her out. She can see his teeth at the other end of the hall, and he walks toward her like a man who has been taken apart and reassembled, his arm and leg movements full of distress and waste motion. When he thought of her he grew angry and swore.