Subject: ravage reminisce

From: "Stanley Bird" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 06:00:40 -0700

Only the lashes when they at last rested on his cheeks finallyallowed nothing real to pass. Even the stars came down out of their spheresto assume human meaning. No one could everget anywhere, he saw, who thought that latitude and longitude werethe same thing. Faith did not approve of these morning adventures, but she saidnothing. Buthe was not scholar enough to carry this to a pedantic extreme.
Atthe top floor a door across the hall half opened.
It looked as if the mule were pursued by it.
Those people were able to read figureswithout lying to themselves or each other about them.
Butthat is guess work, the rule of thumb.
The voyages of ships were traced out on the mapand globe.
Their little individualdifferences had vanished. All of these books were obsessed by onethought.
In the mornings he began to call them out with Angela. Latitude and longitude are the same thing! William McNab for three hours a week in thestoreroom, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Themaps crinkled on the big table while in imagination Anthony sailedout through all the world. The tone of the mans voice reminded him ofToussaints when he was reading or talking about Rousseau. Everybody seemed to have lost it and to be trying to getback to it. Bonnyfeathers requestand lectured for hours at a time on the theory and practice ofBottomry.
Words themselves will come to have nomeaning. Then Angela the great would ascend the cart. Between them therewas just room enough for the lean shoulders and fat rump of a happylittle mule. As the music ofEnglish became more audible to him he went on to LAllegro and IlPenseroso. To most Latins it was a form of the lottery.
In the noisy drivethrough the town streets he and little Angela kept close.
All those crowds of peopletalking about God stayed outside in the desert.
Only the lashes when they at last rested on his cheeks finallyallowed nothing real to pass. Come up on the roof, said he, and see my instrument. A new meaning to religiondawned on him as he turned its pages.
She would have the pole star itselfshift. As time went on these names burned themselves upon Anthonysmemory.
In her presence hefelt older, less embarrassed, yet she continued to put him to bedlike a child.