Now this is paradise. Was any muscle ever so relaxed? Any sunlight's motes so effortlessly swirling, any throne so private? You hardly want to go back out there. To be fair, years of training got me here, long days flexing my thighs atop a worthy steed, and nights repeating the "u"-sound in "aucune idée" to give the firmest shape to my confusion -- no, nothing in this moment was got for free, not in America, whose children link their arms just once a generation to call their elders fools and then subside into a collective isolation so untraceable in origin, so emulsified, you have to wonder how we made it to the barricades to start with.

So many postures into which to pour abasement! I feel like a child before rifles, a ghoul before children, a clown with my friends, and a monster before my doctor, who touched me inappropriately today. When the fighter jets pass overhead I feel a lurch in my stomach I once thought indicated I could compass all of history, immobility and speed, violence and serenity, dust and metal -- I thought I could wrap my arms around it and hand it off to someone like a valentine. And when Scooch kicked open his office window and hurled himself out I dreamt for a week I was down on the ground being pummeled in the chest by six young men, beaten to death, until on the last night of the dream I realized they were trying to pump water out of my lungs.

O I can hear you calling from the other side of reason to say, please, just step over these fantasies, they're poo in the park, and you with civic duties to perform; but stronger men than I have been stranded on this inside curve of outrage, and no one has offered me anything half as satisfying as just sitting here ignoring everyone in line. I know what's waiting for me outside, servants, cousins, everybody curious about my gusto: I know it sounds cheesy and simple, but I just have to follow my dream.