The day was hardly lost.

He lay upon a black rock long worn down by the winds so that it seemed almost soft. His eyes were shut. He had left the big screen. He has lost big time. It made no difference. It was a virtual game. He was chasing someone he did not know. A name. It was all in his head. He lay there and let his mind move to a process he learned long ago. Some words that rose from his reality. He had lost big time. Real or not, it seemed real enough to him. The first word came. Tolerance. He would tolerate himself. He would let it go. He would not weight it down with remembrance of endless failures going back to the Ending. The next word - help. He could manage that. He could help all day. He had been helped by living, by loving life, by seeing art everywhere, some shabby some serene. Another word - democracy. Democracy needed some more words, he thought. Some tough modifiers. Like fairness. Like justice. He would get that said. He shifted on the stone. He would get up soon. The fourth and last word - non-idolatry. There was nothing anywhere that he could honor more than the one he relied on here and with his eyes closed. He honored the reality he knew. He got up off the smooth, black stone. He walked back to the screen.

He would play again. But before that, he would create some things, compose some things, maybe make someone happy by something said or done.

The wind blew gently around him. He knew what it was. From nothing had come everything. Then everything went back again. The day was hardly lost.