54) Running on this night with only a slivered moon to light my way has led to collisions and stumbling, over stones or whatever that was just then. I have ended up in dead-end valleys facing sheer rock cliffs and have had to depart from the pole star to find a way out. And there are the fences, of grisly wire and wood. I have gotten tangled, my clothes and flesh lightly shredded. These barricades are everywhere. So puzzling in such a vast land. I am sure they keep roaming and hungry things in or out, case by case, though I have not seen or heard a living thing, firstly because of my much improved talent of killing an greater removes, but also because night is for quiet hunts and the hiding game. I have learned so much during my travel of the earth: Vile knowledge such as life's frailty, how soft the body emptied of life, how helpless the fawn, the flower, the child in cold, moving water; pleasure knowledge, simple bird songs, shattering glass, the sigh of a soul, lost no more, ascending skyward; obvious knowledge, that night follows day, rivers run to larger waters, that illumination is a must for practical tasks like rushing a landscape. I have pieced together a manner to carry myself upon the earth, a very general comportment, it is true. I can't share my ways with any living thing, I do take the time to add stylings and refinements to the heap of me if I am chanced from far away. A voice might say, There goes a graceful racer! Or, See how well he lays upon the boulder! Best ditch sleeper I've seen! And so on. I should like to be approved of even while doing awful things, with the indulgence of the good Doctor, if I do them well. If this be vanity, then I am vain! More knowledge of my being, right down to my frozen core of nickel or coal. Good to know. Which is yet more! Such a heady spiral I climb, such a graceful commotion of mentation I lean into. I will not choose which image but take both to be mine. Others may occur to me. I'll assume them all. This thirst for the assumption of images, taking charge of the miniature stories they tell, methinks, hints at the sublime the cardinal points hoard and measure within themselves. Or not.
My learning instructs me to wait for light. I pick a sandy spot. I smell smoke. Just over rubble, down a ways, I see a merry fire and figures about it. I will not investigate at all for I would do them harm. Instead, I will be content with wiffs of their smoke. (More pleasure knowledge.) My backpack, filled with idiotic objects, I use for a pillow. The bottles of pebbles from Dr. Creep are a burden to carry and an annoyance to lay a head upon. Still I do, and I sleep. Pleasure knldg, etc.
I dreampt of being torn apart by dogs.
I woke up in snow. Over the rubble the fire is out. The men are draped in white, like me. They are still. No steamy breath. And to think I could have had fire. Further away I see their horses. They see me. Silence. I run from them as fast as I am able. I will not look back.