Perhaps Its Familiarity Rendered It Temporarily Invisible

It Is Simply Wrong To Begin With A Theme, Symbol Or Other Abstract Unifying Agent, And Then Try To Force Characters And Events To Conform To It.

But On The Way Home Tonight, You Wish You'd Picked Him Up, Held Him A Bit. Just Held Him, Very Close To Your Heart, His Cheek By The Hollow Of Your Shoulder, Full Of Sleep. As It It Were You Who Could, Somehow, Save Him. For The Moment Not Caring Who You're Supposed To Be Registered As. For The Moment, Anyway, No Longer Who The Caesars Say You Are.

It's Been A Prevalent Notion. Fallen Sparks. Fragments Of Vessels Broken At The Creation. And Someday, Somehow, Before The End, A Gathering Back To Home. A Messenger From The Kingdom, Arriving At The Last Moment. But I Tell You There Is No Such Message, No Such Home -- Only The Millions Of Last Moments . . . Nothing More. Our History Is An Aggregate Of Last Moments.

If Patterns Of Ones And Zeros Were 'like' Patterns Of Human Lives And Death, If Everything About An Individual Could Be Represented In A Computer Record By A Long String Of Ones And Zeros, Then What Kind Of Creature Would Be Represented By A Long String Of Lives And Deaths?

There Is Nothing So Loathsome As A Sentimental Surrealist.