We Are Not By Nature

Was It Serious? I Don't Know. It Certainly Had Serious Consequences.

In A World Of Chance Is There A Better And A Worse? We Yield To A Stranger's Embrace Or Give Ourselves To The Waves; For The Blink Of An Eyelid Our Vigilance Relaxes; We Are Asleep; And When We Awake, We Have Lost The Direction Of Our Lives. What Are These Blinks Of An Eyelid, Against Which The Only Defence Is An Eternal And Inhuman Wakefulness? Might They Not Be The Cracks And Chinks Through Which Another Voice, Other Voices, Speak In Our Lives? By What Right Do We Close Our Ears To Them? (susan Barton)

If There Were A Better, Clearer, Shorter Way Of Saying What The Fiction Says, Then Why Not Scrap The Fiction?

His Mouth Opens. From Inside Him Comes A Slow Stream, Without Breath, Without Interruption. It Flows Up Through His Body And Out Upon Me; It Passes Through The Cabin, Through The Wreck; Washing The Cliffs And Shores Of The Island, It Runs Northward And Southward To The Ends Of The Earth. Soft And Cold, Dark And Unending, It Beats Against My Eyelids, Against The Skin Of My Face.

Speaking The Words He Had Been Taught, Directing Them No Longer Upward But To The Earth On Which He Knelt, He Prayed: 'for What We Are About To Receive Make Us Truly Thankful.' ... He... Felt His Heart Suddenly Flow Over With Thankfulness... Like A Gush Of Warm Water... All That Remains Is To Live Here Quietly For The Rest Of My Life, Eating Food That My Own Labour Has Made The Earth To Yield. All That Remains Is To Be A Tender Of The Soil.