The incense is burning away, the spent ash falling in tiny tubes around a small ginger scented candle, but not into it. Next to these is a larger candle, the kind embedded with chunks of deeper color but whose scent I cannot place. I am extinguishing ghosts of doubt who are so invisible that I seldom note when they are truly gone.

The fact that I have lit candles and incense, the fact that I have made tea and that everything but the incense was given me for small birthday greetings, all of it, makes sense tonight. The irony of revelation best understood is that half (if not more) of what you come to realize will be gone with daylight, if you have revelations at night, of course, as most of us do. The night, you see, is often all we have left, all that has not yet been compromised. I have been a early bird and a night owl all my life, and still there is no time.

I am worn out on my own conspiracy theories, because thinking that they are true provides the minimal pleasure of being aware. There is still the job of making a life despite that, because giving in and giving up sound the same.

People talk of war as though this war is different from that war or that the enemies are clearer this time than the last, but the realization that a single person can be divided in himself means that the enemy itself can be division or unquestioned unity. I talk in circles because I don't want the circle to run out. If you draw a circle big enough, you will run out of ink if you don't have extra pens.

The trees are stunted and the water is dry, You have to pound out flavor from food these days, you have to seek out freshness of everyday life. That search can become, through accident of appetite, all our lives, all time. More and more the carnal acceptances of rural truth are being exhanged for fictitious grandeur. We are itching in our own skin because we sense that something is wrong. So I say it again and again, in words so small you can barely see them. I can barely see them, for my eyes are worn out from trying to see things that are not there. Time your echos so that they overlap, so you can hear your own chorus ring out. Repeat, the word, means do again. Do it again. Make yourself regular somewhere, so that people know what you order before they speak. When you pick up an orange in the grocery store, even if you haven't ever seen one, close your eyes and imagine an orange tree; remember that oranges grow on trees. Hell, imagine what the factories that make those mini muffins you buy at the gas station, imagine what the little molds they come from look like. I don't care. Just think beyond where you can see.

The trees are stunted and the water is dry. We are losing it.