The Grey
Life, Chapter I
When
I was a little boy mother would sometimes allow me to escape our
luxurious residence in Riverdale and her high-handed discipline and
visit my Aunt Flora in the country. It was with reluctance, though,
that she let me go. Aunt Flora was somewhat rebellious, even after
the accident, and not well trusted in the family. Now that I know
better I understand that of all of us she alone resisted the
barbarous manner in which we were raised. That's not to say she was
unaffected. Grandmother left none of us unscathed.
Mother
referred to any place outside of New York as "the country".
Barrington, Rhode Island, where Aunt Flora lived, is not exactly "the
country," not even back then. From the few times I've been, and
most of them when I was very young, I gathered that the townspeople
were an opinionated sort of folk. They were decent to my Aunt,
though, and spoke about her at least with compassion. Many thought
she was simply retarded. They never spoke badly about her, it is
true, but they often wondered to each other just what she did in that
lonely old house into which few of them had ever been asked, and
amused themselves with wild speculations that they regarded as truth.
Aunt
Flora was married when she was young, soon after she left Arkansas,
to an insurance agent from Baltimore named Charles O'Connor. That was
1963, I think. He was a handsome fellow with a clear sense of purpose
and the potential for laughter. At least, that is how he appeared in
the photographs. No one ever spoke directly to me about him except
mother, and then only vaguely once when she was drunk and I had
pressed her. She told me that Grandmother was vehemently opposed to
the marriage. She told me it was because he wasn't Jewish and he had
a dirty occupation, but I know better. It only took one conversation
with Mr. O'Connor for Grandmother to realize that he would never
defer to her better judgment.
But
Flora felt something exhilarating and daring, something lustfully
youthful, in the disobeying. For the first time in her life she
realized she could make her own choices. To have grown up without
even a shred of hope for herself, not even the knowledge that such
hope existed, and suddenly here was this dashing, young man with a
future offering her a way out. So she decided to marry anyway. From
the house of Mr. O'Connor himself she rang her mother in Arkansas. It
was, I know, the most exciting thing she had ever done.
Grandmother
was outraged. She was, among other things, not able to understand why
her children were fleeing like starved refugees from their places of
holding. All of them, that is, except my Aunt Dorothy, and her fate
was by far the worst. In Grandmother's warped and egocentric view of
the world her children were abandoning her after she had raised them
with care and love, after she had fed them, clothed them, educated
them, and disciplined them appropriately. And they repay all of that
by leaving her to rot in that maddening haven all alone with her
idiot husband, as she referred to him, and the neighbors next door
whom she detested?
Flora
was nineteen when she married Charlie. They were joined at Martha's
Vineyard in June, when all the trees are newly adorned in a fresh
coat of green leaves and the land is healthy and vigorous. It was a
small wedding, only a few close friends and some of Mr. O'Connor's
family. They returned from their honeymoon in Barbados and in July
moved into a small house in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore where Mr.
O'Connor worked. Not beyond walking distance was Towson State
University, where people the age of my Aunt Flora and older would in
the fall be exploring the freedom of their youth. It was a romantic
proposition for my Aunt and she could not resist. Sometimes, while
her husband was working, she would stand on the outskirts of the
campus, usually by the fence around the athletic fields, looking in,
imagining what must be going on behind the thick walls and on the
sharply green grass. In early August Aunt Flora discovered that she
was pregnant.
One
evening in early October, when the warmth is failing toward evening
and there is something heavy in the air, Aunt Flora returned from one
of her visits to the university and found the house where she slept
strangely quiet. She called for her husband, but her only answer was
an uncanny silence. She wandered through the downstairs, calling his
name, rubbing at the same time her belly and the precious package she
bore, and as the sun lowered in the sky and the shadows lengthened it
seemed that she had found herself once again in a strange land of fog
and things that hide in the dark.
She
stepped into the bedroom and peered through the shadows, looking to
find the soft eyes of her husband gazing lovingly back at her naked
from their bed. But she found him instead strung up inside the
wardrobe like a cow for the slaughter, his tongue blue and swollen
and hanging out of his mouth a lot farther than it should have. And
his eyes, his eyes! Staring at her wide-eyed with a terror that would
remain forever. Staring at her and yet not really seeing, as it were.
Aunt
Flora screamed and dropped to her knees, not understanding what
exactly happened to this place. Grandmother rose up from the shadows
by the bed and approached menacingly. Flora did not resist. With a
duly calculated savagery - dim and distant she must have seemed - she
began to kick her daughter in the stomach. The blows landed with
heavy accuracy. I don't think Aunt Flora put up much of a fight. I
think she just lay on the ground, not positively sure which was the
greater, the physical or the mental pain, or even the completion of
her estrangement from the rest of the world.
One
of those kicks especially she remembered, because that's when she
felt herself lose whatever it was growing inside her, like a piece of
dead and unclean flesh that falls from the leper messiah on his final
journey to his people.
Drusus
laughed when I tried to explain. He thinks Grandmother was the most
horribly evil person who ever lived. Perhaps she was. But if I've
learned anything from my life I know that things are rarely as
definitive as they seem. I knew Grandmother, and I know that she did
not plot to destroy the lives of her children. Even if it was a
terrible love she acted out of love nonetheless. Like our own parents
she wanted to raise them to live as she lived, to believe as she
believed because the world is a terrible place and we have to learn
how best to get along in it.
Grandmother
believed she was helping Flora when she murdered her husband and
destroyed her unborn child. The husband would have led her to the den
of Satan and the child, well, the fruit of such an unholy union could
only have meant trouble. So she did what needed to be done, quickly
and without compassion. When it was over she carried Flora to the car
and drove her to the hospital. On the way she spoke soothingly.
"It'll be alright now, dear," she was saying. "The
worst is over." But was it? Flora couldn't have known. She was
entirely numb except for the tears. She listened dumbly as
Grandmother described in maddening detail her husband's suicide and
the unfortunate accident. And she repeated the words to the doctor,
because the truth was by far much worse. After time, I think, she
came to believe the story herself.
One
of the earliest memories I have of Grandmother is from a visit she
paid to us in New York around the time of the Carter-Reagan election.
I remember because Grandmother favored the Hollywood actor. "We
need a change!" she told mother in the car, waving an ominously
skeletal finger in her direction. "Yes, Mother".
Except
the first time she stayed with us she slept in my room. I never
minded, because on those occasions I moved into the basement where
there was a television set. At the time to stay up as long as I
wanted and eat whatever I could find in the kitchen was a real treat.
Not that I was allowed to do any of these things. The few times I
remember Grandmother coming I also remember mother telling me that I
wasn't to leave the basement at night, not even if I had to go to the
bathroom. And each time Grandmother left she would sit me down to
chastise me. She would complain about how I didn't listen, about how
I made her look badly. If I couldn't learn to behave properly, she
once told me, then she just might have to send me away to Arkansas,
to which I responded with a fit of tears and, throwing myself into
her arms, a desperate plea to keep her good little boy in New York. I
was five or six years old.
I
never liked Grandmother. When my younger brother and I entered the
kitchen to greet her for the first time she sat herself down at the
table and stared at us with eyes clearly possessed, eyes that were of
no color at all. Of course, I had heard, or sensed, rather, from
those around me just how horrid she had become. At times after that
she'd try and get me alone with her, but I would never allow it. I
may not have been able to put it into words, but I could sense that
there was something twisted about Grandmother. But she was able to
get at my brother on several different occasions. He is still an
unforgettable reminder of what could have been me. Grandmother
gradually stole him away from us in quiet snatches, shy, and
committed already to whatever doom she had made for him. And mother -
well, she was upset that Grandmother was able to get inside her
little boy, too. This was supposed to be her family.
Sometimes
they would fight about it. Once I heard mother sobbing in her
bedroom. I mustered enough courage to peek through the half-closed
door and saw Grandmother holding mother's head in her lap. She was
gently caressing the soft hair, her colorless eyes resting neatly on
her daughter's tear stained cheeks. And for a moment, I felt a keen
hurt inside me, to see mother like that. "It's okay, darling,"
I remember Grandmother saying in eerily soothing tones. "Patrick
just loves me best."
But
as much as I tried, and I tried very hard, to keep away from
Grandmother, she managed to corner me that first night.
I
was upstairs in my room alone when she walked in. I looked up with
something like horror on my face, and I think she noticed, and it
hurt her. She paused in the doorway, standing strangely crooked, a
momentary look of pain passing over her delicately carved features,
and then suddenly it was gone and she smiled.
"Why,
hello there, David." I always hated the way her accent twisted
the "a" in my name. She moved into the room much more
easily than someone would expect from a woman her age, and before I
could react she had seated herself upon the bed beside me.
"Hullo,
Grandm'ma," I replied meekly, intimidated.
"How
have you been?"
"Good."
She
reached for her big, black purse. "Would you like some candy,
David?"
"No!"
I answered quickly. Too quickly, perhaps, for her face darkened
eerily. "Thanks," I added, smiling sheepishly.
"Humph,"
she muttered darkly to herself. She stood up and started strolling
about the room, as if she were in a park or a museum, eyes flicking
this way and that. I followed her carefully with my own eyes, and as
I did I caught a brief glimpse somewhere in the back of my mind of
Grandmother, late at night in my room, going through my things.
"David,
David, David," she muttered after a moment, and in an instant
she had turned to face me. Her eyes were picking me apart. I looked
quickly away, fumbling with my pajamas. All I wanted was for her to
leave.
"Are
you afraid of me, David?" she asked suddenly.
"No,"
I answered, my lower lip trembling.
She
smiled, but it was not a smile of warmth. "Don't lie to me,
David," she admonished sternly and took a dangerous step towards
me from around the bed. "I'll always know when you're lying."
"Yes,
Grandm'ma."
"People
who lie end up all alone, David. Nobody likes them. Is that how you
want to grow up? All alone, with no one to love you?"
I
shook my head quickly, not even daring to answer with my voice.
She
took another step closer. "You don't know what it's like to be
alone, do you?"
Again
I shook my head. Tears were welling up behind my eyes like a storm.
Another
step. She was only a few feet away. "That's why I'm here, David,
to make sure that none of you, whom I love so very much, end up all
alone in this cruel world. Your mother and your Aunt Flora tried to
leave me alone. But I've forgiven them, because I'm their mother."
A
tear escaped my eye and slid easily down my cheek. As it fell from my
jaw Grandmother caught the thing with a strong, leathery hand. "This
is what it all comes down to, David," I remember her saying as
she presented it to me. The tiny mound of wetness glistened in the
fluorescent lighting on the pale, yellowish skin. I looked into those
ancient eyes and for an instant it was not one woman who stood before
me but rather the sum of an age long line of insanity, from
Grandmother's mother, to her mother's mother, to her mother's
mother's mother, and beyond. And as I stood gazing into her face,
trying somehow to understand her, she slapped me across the cheek
with considerable force. I could feel the remains of the tear amid
the bitter stinging. "That's for lying," she informed me
resolutely. I fled the room, too shocked even for more tears.
But
there were the occasional bright moments in my childhood. As I told
you before, mother would sometimes allow me to visit Aunt Flora in
Barrington. There is one trip up to the country I'll never forget. It
was the first time I realized that our way of life was not natural.
One night at the end of February Flora called from Grandmother's
house and asked if she could pick me up on her way through New York.
I was six years old. No, not even. I remember sitting by the window
of our living room, staring calmly over the street below. A small,
yellow carry-on bag lay by my feet. I remember mother walking quietly
into the room behind me, watching me with a strange look on her face,
something bitter that rang with a deep streak of sadness. I saw her
reflection in the glass but pretended not to notice. After a minute
or two, she left.
The
ride up to Rhode Island was quiet. Aunt Flora seemed agitated,
excited, and at various times during the speedy, two-and-a-half-hour
ride she'd break out with an angry curse or a bitter stream of
mumbling. I didn't know it then, but it must have been Grandmother.
Why else was the needle on the speedometer edging one hundred miles
per hour? She was fleeing like a broken animal who, knowing she must
return at the beck and call of the torturer, finds despair in the
paradox of escape. She knew she was an agent of Emmanuel Goldstein,
whose book Grandmother had, of course, written herself, and in that
she felt agony and self-hatred tainted by self-pity and rebellion.
What a resourceless combination.
Aunt
Flora lived in an old Tudor house on a quaint little street near the
center of town. It was a large house for one person to live in, and I
have no idea how she managed to afford it. I don't know that she ever
worked much, except at small secretarial positions throughout
Providence, and none of the townspeople who were able to remember
could tell me. I'll never forget the broad, tree lined backyard. I
was often kept occupied back there for hours. Sometimes Aunt Flora
would come outside and sit by the back of the garage with her head in
her hands. She would sit under the ivy that was laboring toward the
top of the steep, brick walls and watch me, but not in the same way
that I'd catch mother looking at me in those years. Mother seemed
always to be angry and sad at the same time. Aunt Flora would look on
as I'd play my games with that same sadness, but there was also a
subtle nostalgia in her pupils like the smell of wild roses in the
wind. No, I was never bothered much by Aunt Flora's eyes, as gentle
as they were, but sometimes they would infect me with her deep
melancholy and I'd sit in the grass with my back to her, playing
uneasily with the blades of grass until she had gone.
There
were other times, though, when Aunt Flora would encourage me to
continue with my games in greater earnest. Occasionally, as I was
dancing through the yard or fighting off some great invisible
monster, I'd catch a smile on her face that would provoke me to even
greater feats of heroism. It was a rare smile, yes, but it was also
one of the genuinely warmest forms of expression a sad, lonely old
man like myself has ever had the good fortune to see. "How big
is it?" she'd ask me as I defended her from some hideous
snake-creature that had threatened without provocation. "Fifty
feet, Aunt Flora - no, more!" And then she'd smile that
wonderful smile and I'd only redouble my efforts.
But
those were days when the sun was warm, in the spring or the summer.
If ever I came during the winter the outside games were different and
much less frequent. Aunt Flora didn't like me playing outside in the
cold for too long because she feared I might get sick. So most of
those winter visits were spent indoors looking out the window or
listening to old records by a fire. And for the most part, this was
how I passed the fourth week of February 1978.
I
never liked Aunt Flora when she was upset. Her limbs would tremble,
her eyes would grasp at the landscape, and at times she gave the
impression that she was about to explode into a trillion bits of
meaningless nothingness. I'd sometimes be left with nothing to eat.
Not on purpose, I'm sure, but because my aunt had simply forgotten
she was hungry. But Aunt Flora was calmer when we arrived at the
house, and the next morning her disposition had improved even more.
She was still nervous and prone to distraction but seemed able to
hold a reasonable conversation. She even managed a smile for me from
the doorway of my room, and later on cooked me eggs and bacon and hot
chocolate for breakfast.
She
showed me around the house. There were a lot of interesting things
for a young boy to look at: giant fur rugs, old baseball cards,
Indian mosaics, and other trinkets that confirmed the world had
existed before I was brought into it. Flora had decorated her home
well, had adorned the inside with a smoky array of colors you could
taste. But color schemes and pretentious attempts at art did not
interest me. I had an eye for the photographs, though. There weren't
many, and what few she did have were of the same two people. She
liked to ignore them, but my five-year-old mind was keenly interested
in the still faces, one of which seemed awfully familiar.
"Who's
that?" I finally asked her in the living room, pointing to an
old, black and white photograph of a distinguished looking young man.
"Who?"
Aunt Flora asked, turning around, and then she saw what I was
pointing at. A brief look of pain agonized her features. "No
one," she told me coldly, and then she simply stopped. Her heart
was still beating, of course, but her eyes glazed over and I guessed
that Aunt Flora was somewhere far away, like mother had warned me
sometimes happens.
While
I waited for Aunt Flora to return I decided to look around by myself.
It was only a moment before my youthful eye caught sight of the other
captured face, this time encased in a gold picture frame on a table
to the right of the fireplace. This was the familiar face, a photo of
a young girl perhaps twelve years old in a plain dress. She was
sitting in a high-backed wooden chair gazing meekly at the floor, her
hands folded neatly in her lap. How curious she seemed. How old, as
if the photo should have been dusty. Of course, at that age last week
seemed long ago. But there was something misty behind that frame, and
I remember thinking to myself that if anything in the world were
older no one could remember it.
"That,"
said Aunt Flora behind me, "is your Aunt Dorothy when she was
young, although she's older in that picture than you are now."
I
started at the suddenness of her voice, but when I saw it was only my
aunt I grew calm again. Turning back to the photo, I said, "It
looks so -"
"Old?"
"Yes."
"It
was a long time ago."
"How
long?"
"Seventeen
years."
A
brief moment of silence descended, and each of us followed our
thoughts in virtually unrelated directions. After a moment, I said
aloud, "I've never seen her before."
"Of
course not." Aunt Flora replied strangely, taking me by the hand
and leading me away. "You're not old enough." We approached
the front hallway where the stairs were. But before we left the room
I caught my aunt stealing a glance behind her, as if to reassure
herself that the faces in her living room were simply faces and
nothing more.
Aunt
Flora led me upstairs. She was quiet now, uneasily quiet, nodding
meekly at the bathroom and the bedrooms and not even offering to show
me what was in the closets. I was sorry I had shown her the picture.
There was an ominous feeling emanating from her. I couldn't help but
concentrate on it because there wasn't much to see up there, and even
less that interested me. The atmosphere upstairs seemed to be
sensitive to my intrusion. It had the guarded wariness of a place
that is stuffed with secrets.
Directly
across the top of the stairwell by a door that led into the guest
room where I was sleeping there was a light gray, wooden wardrobe. It
appeared sickly in a house that was overflowing with the rich
textures of autumn. The keyhole was just above my head. I had to go
by it each time I went in or out of my room, and each time that
keyhole beckoned. Eventually, I stole a glimpse inside, but the
darkness beyond was impenetrable and cold.
On
our way back downstairs Aunt Flora noticed my lingering glances. For
such a slow woman she was suddenly leading me quickly away. It seemed
she was speaking before I had a chance to think about questioning
her. "Now don't you worry about that, David," she told me.
I stole another glance behind. The wardrobe stared back at me
blankly, a sleeping creature crouched on its haunches on the verge of
waking. Then the stairs overcame my view. "You've already seen
too much for your own good. And," she continued as we headed for
the kitchen, "I don't advise your going near it again. There are
monsters in there - big, fat, ugly creatures that are worse than the
ones you pretend are running out back. And they're mean, David.
Ruthless. They wouldn't think twice about gobbling you up for dinner!
But don't you worry," she added, "if you leave them alone
they can't hurt you. The thing's locked, didn't you see?" And
with that she opened her cupboard. All the horror fell away and it
was just me and Aunt Flora again, soon to be sitting by the fire in
the living room sipping hot chocolate out of giant mugs and listening
to Elvis on vinyl.
The
snow started late in the afternoon of the twenty-eighth. As the
evening got on, I could see that Aunt Flora was getting worried.
There, she was trembling again, and weren't her eyes just beginning
to flicker? She took her place by a rather large window in the living
room, overlooking the street. From there she could watch the snow and
wring her hands traumatically, sipping hot chocolate. A lot of hot
chocolate was drunk that night, and I was thankful because it was one
of those nights I didn't eat dinner.
The
six o'clock news had reported that there was a huge storm at sea, a
real Nor'easter from what I understand, moving westward, approaching
the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The weatherman in
bellbottoms in front of the incandescent map had with a placid smile
assured his viewers that only the tip of the storm would strike land.
A couple of inches for the coastal areas that would melt by mid-
morning and that would be all. Mothers needn't worry about getting
their children to school, he told us. And fathers needn't worry about
being stranded at home with their wives and children and a growing
case of dangerously high blood pressure. He told us that, too, but in
different words.
Despite
his clammy assurances, Aunt Flora grew worried as the light faded
from the sky and the snow started coming down more heavily, beefy
flakes that appealed to me strangely. After all, when did good, clean
snow that I could play in ever last in New York City? The snow had
piled up to more than "a couple of inches" before dinner,
and by seven o'clock there were at least five.
"It's
not going to stop," I heard Flora cry to herself around quarter
till eight. She was rocking herself like a sickly child in her chair,
hot hands gripping her shoulders painfully and a cold mug of
overturned chocolate lapping at her feet. She had wrung her hands
red, and in the light from the street outside, as obscured as it was,
I think I remember seeing little beads of sweat on her brow. I was
crouched in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching. My
hands were near my face. I was probably pouting, too, but certainly
not sucking my thumb. Mother had bitter tasting stuff for that. After
a while I got up and ran away.
I
wandered through the house, trying to forget Aunt Flora, touching
this, touching that, until eventually I came upon another picture of
my Aunt Dorothy. What a beautiful brass frame, and the same young
girl's face. This time she was a bit older, perhaps nearing high
school, and the face was colder. Blank, even, as if there were
nothing behind it except a heartbeat.
I
don't know exactly why Grandmother chose Dorothy. I think she was
trying to make her strong. All I know is that Dorothy wilted in that
harsh, Arkansas heat. Mother never liked talking about her. I know
it's because she feels incredibly guilty. She treated her cruelly
when she realized Dorothy would never fight back. She never admitted
it to me, because always in her mind she was the proud martyr, but
judging by how she treated her sons I know it to be true. Mother told
me that Dorothy was odd and that she didn't want to talk about it
anymore. Well, she told me a few other things, too.
When
she was old enough to attend grade school one of Dorothy's teachers
phoned the house. She was concerned, mother told me, because Dorothy
had no friends, and wanted to inquire about her home life.
Grandmother carried on such that the idealistic young woman was
eventually fired. After that Dorothy was educated at home. She rarely
went out, and when Grandmother wasn't lecturing her she was staring
dumbly out a second-story window. I guess there was nothing to
prevent her from losing herself in the abyss of silence she had
opened inside. She was fading away, withdrawing into her own, private
world. They all watched it happen and did nothing. And what world had
she created for herself? No one can say.
When
Dorothy was just twelve she had her first trance. She had been taking
something out of the refrigerator when she simply stopped in
mid-motion, staring off with pupils that were dead or made of glass.
As if frozen, or time had stopped, she remained stuck until
Grandmother slapped her effortlessly across the face. A bottle of
milk fell from her twitching hand and shattered on the floor. "What's
the matter with you?" Grandmother snapped. "Clean that up
at once!" But Dorothy just blinked stupidly. She never realized
what was happening. Once, mother told me, Flora found her in the
bathroom with a toothbrush sticking eerily out of her mouth, her dead
eyes fixed on the reflection in the mirror over the sink.
Dorothy
was still breathing as I stood gazing that night at her picture, but
the next she was no longer. The blizzard continued unabated, at times
tapering off and then renewing its rage. Nature can, of course, be
terrifying. So Aunt Flora could never have left, and all the phone
lines were out of service. But I don't think Grandmother tried
calling that night, anyway, although the blizzard turned out to be a
magnificent excuse. When Aunt Flora spoke next to Grandmother it was
a week later, and Barrington was sheathed not only in forty inches of
snow but an inch an a half of beautiful ice as well. And sometime
during the week they had buried Dorothy.
But
I know now that Dorothy had died a long time before that, in 1955 to
be exact. You see, her trances started lasting longer, arrived more
and more frequently, until one day sometime around the time of year
she died Dorothy fell into a trance from which she was never to
emerge. Grandmother eventually sent her away to a state mental
hospital in the middle of Arkansas somewhere, and what horrible
things they did to her there I cannot say.
After
the night of the first of March 1978 Grandmother's bitterness
deepened. Was she punishing herself for murdering her daughter? All
creatures die in some manner or another. Guilt? I never saw it on the
woman's face, but perhaps. She did love her daughters, you see,
although each in a different way she managed to destroy them all.
But
I did not know any of this at the time, and I am glad I did not.
After a minute I lost interest in the photo and wandered off again,
this time heading for the stairs. In the patched darkness I passed
the wardrobe, and a brief panic overcame me. For a moment, the thing
loomed ahead and I thought I heard breathing inside. Terrified, I ran
past it into Aunt Flora's bedroom. There I stood staring madly at the
wall, following the shadows that shifted like phantoms, knowing that
one of them was some monster's behind. But the fear quickly fell
away, and I even felt brave enough to close the door. I walked around
the place for a long moment, confused, bored, swinging my slim arms
about me in the sea of darkness, of space. After a time, I found
myself gazing out the window at the street below.
It
was nearing nine-thirty on the first night of two long days, and the
snow had gotten pretty high. Eight inches already, perhaps, and the
dazzling snowfall only seemed to be growing heavier. The street was
virtually invisible, the light from the street lamp a mere haze as
the snowflakes, some as big as my hand, came shuffling easily towards
the earth. But there was another light in the gloom, a light from the
house across the street, and in the deep night I thought I could
discern the vague image of a lonely face in a window upstairs, small
and sad like my own, gazing with its own sense of wisdom on the world
outside. And for a blinding instant it all seemed so suddenly
familiar, as if I had been by this window before at this time of
night thinking along relatively the same lines as I was then and
seeing the same things. Nothing more than a window in time, I guess,
that for an instant had gazed upon itself.
This site and all its
contents are the result of the tumultuous workings of the mind of one
Adam Wasserman.
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