Deeper Wonders

Sex and literature are geographic. Which is why, for example, Ruthie bought Moby Dick in Venice, Italy. She had always read big books. Her paperback copy of Moby Dick measured 8" tall and 5 1/4" wide and an inch and quarter at the spine. There were 583 pages with approximately 64 words per inch or 83,072 words in toto. How's that for an unwritten life? The margins were 7/8" but varied occasionally. And what of James Joyce? She remembered standing in the Pacific Ocean in her favorite dress in February and water up to her neck with the waves crashing over her head and maybe it was hours before she walked calmly back to shore. It was not her goal to walk on water, but to be submerged. As a child, she took Baptism literally, hiding behind the pews while watching her loved ones die and become reborn in the blood of Christ. She bought her copy of Moby Dick in Venice, Italy, which is sinking by the way, and stayed in her hotel room during the day while her husband slept and they grew farther apart. She didn't think she could be unhappier. She was wrong.

American Progress, John Gast

"Hark ye yet again, the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?" Ruthie drove through Georgia once on her way to Florida. There was a sign in the front yard of a big white house along the road. "He who despiseth the Lord shall be destroyed." Well. She had always read big books. She wanted to be submerged.