or falling petals turning into frogs.
The laughter relaxed him, collapsed the manic pressure to solve it
He decided his best strategy was to give up for awhile. He’d offered himself to the Diamond and so far had been refused. Fine. No more vanishing with the Diamond except in defense. If he was patient, maybe the Diamond would come to him.
He also decided to keep the twice-swiped Cutlass. If he couldn’t be captured, nothing could compromise his safety – or nothing except losing the power to vanish. Conserving his strength for emergencies was even more reason to quit vanishing with the Diamond.
His new approach, he thought, was adventurous yet eminently sane. Yet he was fidgeting behind the wheel because he kept imagining himself looking into the Diamond, pouring himself into the spiral-flamed furnace at its center, and he couldn’t allow himself that anymore. He turned on the radio for distraction.
A half-hour later, with the first stars glimmering above and the lights of Reno a pale hollow on the horizon, a blast of static fried the local station and Denis Joyner took the air.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I’m David Janus, your host for this sundown program of ontological inquiry, ‘Moment of Truth,’ brought to you from the mobile studio of the Public Bullcast System on the frequency to which you’re evidently tuned.
I trust you’ll find this evening’s program as compelling as I do, though its format is slightly different than our usual broadcast fare. That’s right, Santa, there is no Virginia. And while it saddens me to disabuse you of such sweet beliefs, I can only echo my old friend Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sweeping disclaimer that ‘the world is the case.’ Alas, dear listeners, we can only drink it by the glass.
Which brings me to the creative origins of tonight’s presentation. This afternoon as I browsed my library, sipping a young but ambitious petite syrah, I realized my enlightenment, while total, has become slightly stale of late. I therefore resolved that I would henceforth seek to explore complexities worthy of my pretensions. Thus decided, I fortified myself with an ounce of Serbian caviar accompanied by a chilled liter of Thunderbird (
Quickly then –
The mind is a glass floor.
The mind is the spirit’s tear.
The mind is our prior and subsequent ghost.
The mind is the Bullion Express and the blood on the tracks.
The mind is a stone door.
The silver on the backs of mirrors.
The wave that defines the coast.
It’s what the drunk grave robbers couldn’t stuff in their sacks.
The mind is the sum of all and more.
The spasm between one and zero in the Calendar of Black-Hole Years.
The contract between the lash and the whipping post.
A quilt of dreams stitched with facts.
A meaningless argument among the whores.
Rain that keeps falling when the sky clears.
A masquerade party, guest and host.
A candlelit landscape of puddled wax.
The mind is what thought is for.
The parking lot at the Mall of Fears.
The fire-pit for the piggy roast.
What the soul surrendered and won’t take back.
The mind is neither either nor or.
The real center of an empty sphere.
This has been your man of the hour on ‘Moment of Truth.’ I trust your attention proved worthy of my intelligence, and that as you listened you cried out that ultimate Destructuralist accolade, ‘Tha’s a big ten-four, good buddy!’ And so, until next time, do keep in mind that
Daniel snapped off the radio and stared down the road. He remembered Volta talking about an AMO-financed mobile pirate radio station and wondered if that’s what he’d been listening to. It figured. He’d have to mention it to Volta the next time they talked, tell him that it had strengthened him while he was running with the Diamond. The reminder that he was part of an ancient alliance of magicians and outlaws cheered him up. But also, and perhaps
