At first, I didn’t know what I was doing. I mistook this feeling for fear.

After so many years of therapeutic treatment, my brain has become a well-honed knife, deftly cutting from experience all catalysts for hurt and then transferring them to petri dishes for later examination.

When this machine malfunctions, I become a master diagnostician, and I unfailingly prescribe the correct cure:

steak and eggs;
a hot bath;
a short run;
two additional hours of sleep;
or a long, wet scream.

Of course, I have not cured myself of all ailments, but I have done away with the most destructive.

The rest—numerical superstition, persistent volatility—remain in order to verify my divine power.

I am the Doctor, the Patient, and the Botanist;

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

If you want genius on a crucifix, I’ll gladly hang myself.

Despite what it might sound like, I am frequently guilty of underestimating my own faculties, and so I forgot how effective I have become.

Now I revel in my cleverness. This is not panic. It is power.

Every image I thought I feared is an arsenal, a talisman, a battery.

If I must sometimes avoid these images, it is only to preserve their potency.



I hide a second pair of eyes behind mine.