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To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I’m old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.
I’m sure that your life is filled with as much happiness, charm, wonder, and abiding fear as anyone could wish. Like me, you are human, after all, and we know what a joy and terror that is.
I never set the alarm because my internal clock is so reliable. If I wish to wake promptly at five, then before going to bed I tell myself three times that I must be awake sharply at 4:45. While reliable, my internal alarm clock for some reason runs fifteen minutes slow.
Sometimes simply getting from bed to bathroom can take the charm out of a new day.
I would throw myself off a high cliff for her if she asked me to jump. I would, of course, need to understand the reasoning behind her request.
If I were you, I’d have gone crazy years ago.” “I’ve considered it,” I admitted.
Being a short-order cook on a slow shift must be akin to being a symphony conductor without either musicians or an audience. You stand poised for action in an apron instead of a tuxedo, holding a spatula rather than a baton, longing to interpret the art not of composers but of chickens.
Only a handful know that I see the restless dead. The others have whittled an image of me with the distorting knives of rumor until I am a different piece of scrimshaw to each of them.
“She’s had things hard. She doesn’t need this.” “Shot in the head? Who does need it?”
According to her, she’s not ambitious, just easily bored and in need of stimulation. I have frequently offered to stimulate her. She says she’s talking about mental stimulation.
“It’s a gift.” Tapping my head, I said, “I’ve still got the box it came in.”
Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard’s thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.
Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn’t mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me.
“In the belly of Leviathan, Mr. Thomas, one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere.” He smiled brightly.
We are not strangers to ourselves; we only try to be.
When I picked up the fallen scissors, my hand shook so badly that I gave the air a vigorous trimming before I was able to steady myself.
