-- Today we make the leap to faith. Today.
-- Today?
-- Today.
-- Were really going to do it? At last?
-- Spent too much time fooling around. Today we do it.
-- I dont know. Maybe were not ready?
-- I am cheered by the wine of possibility and the growing popularity of light. Todays the day.
-- Youre serious.
-- Intensely. First, we examine our sces.
-- I am a double-minded man. Have always been a double-minded man.
-- Each examining his own sce, rooting out, naming, remembering and re-experieng every last little k and wrinkle. Root and branch.
-- Smiting each sce hip and thigh.
-- Thigh and hip. Smite! Smite!
-- God is good and we are but poor wretches who --
-- Wait.
-- Poor slovening wretches who but for the goodness of God would --
-- Wait. This will be painful, you know. A bit.
-- Oh my God.
-- What?
-- I just had a thought.
-- A prick of sce.
-- Yes. Item 34.
-- Whats Item 34?
-- An unkindness. One of a series. Series long as your arm.
-- You list them separately.
-- Yes.
-- You dont just throw them all together into a great big trash bag labeled --
-- No. I sweat eae. Seriatim.
-- I said it would be painful.
-- Might we postpo?
-- Meditate instead on His works? Their magnifice.
-- Not that we could in a hundred million years exhaust --
-- Its a sort of if-a-bird-took-one-grain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life-and-then-another-bird-took-anrain-of-sand-and-flew-all-his-life situation.
-- plate only the animals. Restrict the field. Course we got over a million species, so far. New ones being identified every day. Is, mostly.
-- I like plants better than animals.
-- Animals give you a lot of warmth. A dog would be an example.
-- I like people better than plants, plants better than animals, paintings better than animals, and music better than animals.
-- Praising the animals, then, would not be your first impulse.
-- I respect the animals. I admire the animals. But could we plate something else?
-- Take a glass of water, for example. A glass of water is a miraculous thing.
-- The blue of the sky, against which we find the shog green of the leaves of the trees.
-- The trees. "I think that I shall never see slash A poem lovely as a tree."
-- "A tree whose hungry mouth is prest slash Against the earths sweet flowing breast."
-- Why "mouth"?
-- Why "breast"?
-- The w of the creative mind.
-- An unfathomable mystery.
-- o be fathomed.
-- I wouldnt even want to fathom it. If ohomed it, who say what frightful things might thereupohomed?
-- Fathoming such is beyond the powers of poor ravening noodles like ourselves, who but for the --
-- And ahing. The human voice.
-- My God youre right. The human voice.
-- Bessie Smith.
-- Alice Babs.
-- Joan Armatrading.
-- Aretha Franklin.
-- Each voice testifying to the greater honor and glory of God, ea its own way.
-- Damn straight.
-- Sweet Emma Barrett the Bell Gal.
-- Got you.
-- Das Lied von der Erde.
-- I couldnt agree more.
-- Then there are the bad things. cer.
-- An unfathomable mystery, at this point. But one which must iably succumb to the inexorable forward march of stific progress.
-- Eiequality.
-- In my vi