Whenever Feasible, One Should Always

We Routinely Leave Our Small Children In Day Care Among Strangers. At The Same Time, In Our Guilt We Evince Paranoia About Strangers And Foster Fear In Children.

Spaces Devoted To Hannibal Lecter’s Earliest Years Differ From The Other Archives In Being Incomplete. Some Are Static Scenes, Fragmentary, Like Painted Attic Shards Held Together By Blank Plaster. Other Rooms Hold Sound And Motion, Great Snakes Wrestling And Heaving In The Dark And Lit In Flashes. Pleas And Screaming Fill Some Places On The Grounds Where Hannibal Himself Cannot Go. But The Corridors Do Not Echo Screaming, And There Is Music If You Like.

What Do You Look At While You’re Making Up Your Mind? Ours Is Not A Reflective Culture, We Do No Raise Our Eyes Up To The Hills. Most Of The Time We Decide The Critical Things While Looking At The Linoleum Floor Of An Institutional Corridor, Or Whispering Hurriedly In A Waiting Room With A Television Blatting Nonsense.

What Does He Do, Clarice? What Is The First And Principal Thing He Does, What Need Does He Serve By Killing? He Covets. How Do We Begin To Covet? We Begin By Coveting What We See Every Day.

You Would Think Such A Day Would Tremble To Begin . . .