And, Selfish And Scared, I Wonder How

She Really Was Pretty, For A Grown-up Person, But When You Are Seven, Beauty Is An Abstraction, Not An Imperative. I Wonder What I Would Have Done If She Had Smiled At Me Like That Now: Whether I Would Have Handed My Mind Or My Heart Or My Identify To Her For The Asking, As My Father Did.

I'm Not Blessed, Or Merciful. I'm Just Me. I've Got A Job To Do, And I Do It. Listen: Even As We're Talking, I'm There For Old And Young, Innocent And Guilty, Those Who Die Together And Those Who Die Alone. I'm In Cars And Boats And Planes; In Hospitals And Forests And Abbatoirs. For Some Folks Death Is A Release, And For Others Death Is An Abomination, A Terrible Thing. But In The End, I'm There For All Of Them.

It Used To Be Thought That The Events That Changed The World Were Things Like Big Bombs, Maniac Politicians, Huge Earthquakes, Or Vast Population Movements, But It Has Now Been Realized That This Is A Very Old-fashioned View Held By People Totally Out Of Touch With Modern Thought. The Things That Really Change The World, According To Chaos Theory, Are The Tiny Things. A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings In The Amazonian Jungle, And Subsequently A Storm Ravages Half Of Europe.

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were. Adult Stories Never Made Sense, And They Were Slow To Start. They Made Me Feel Like There Were Secrets, Masonic, Mythic Secrets, To Adulthood. Why Didn't Adults Want To Read About Narnia, About Secret Islands And Smugglers And Dangerous Fairies?

He Was Alone In The Darkness Once More, But The Darkness Became Brighter And Brighter Until It Was Burning Like The Sun.