I Am Not A Fate Worse Than

They Stared At Her Curiously, And She Caught Snatches Of Conversation In Two Or Three Languages. It Wasn't Hard To Guess Their Content, And She Smiled A Bit Primly. Youth, It Appeared, Was Full Of Illusions As To How Much Sexual Energy Two People Might Have To Spare While Hiking Forty Or So Kilometers A Day, Concussed, Stunned, Diseased, On Poor Food And Little Sleep, Alternating Caring For A Wounded Man With Avoiding Becoming Dinner For Every Carnivore Within Range - And With A Coup To Plan For The End.

The Real Unforgivable Acts Are Committed By Calm Men In Beautiful Green Silk Rooms, Who Deal Death Wholesale, By The Shipload, Without Lust, Without Anger, Or Desire, Or Any Redeeming Emotion To Excuse Them But Cold Fear Of Some Pretended Future. But The Crimes They Hope To Prevent In That Future Are Imaginary. The Ones They Commit In The Present - They Are Real.

You Don't Pay Back Your Parents. You Can't. The Debt You Owe Them Gets Collected By Your Children, Who Hand It Down In Turn. It's A Sort Of Entailment. Or If You Don't Have Children Of The Body, It's Left As A Debt To Your Common Humanity. Or To Your God, If You Possess Or Are Possessed By One. The Family Economy Evades Calculation In The Gross Planetary Product. It's The Only Deal I Know Where, When You Give More Than You Get, You Aren't Bankrupted - But Rather, Vastly Enriched.

When You Can’t Do Something Truly Useful, You Tend To Vent The Pent Up Energy In Something Useless But Available, Like Snappy Dressing.

One Foot In Front Of The Other, Wasn't That The Grownup Way Of Solving Problems? Surely He Ought To Be A Grownup At His Age.