Behind The Hieroglyphic Streets There Would Either

Like So Many Named Places In California It Was Less An Identifiable City Than A Grouping Of Concepts--census Tracts, Special Purpose Bond-issue Districts, Shopping Nuclei, All Overlaid With Access Roads To Its Own Freeway.

She May Know A Little, May Think Of Herself, Face And Body, As ‘pretty’…but He Could Never Tell Her All The Rest, How Many Other Living Things, Birds, Nights Smelling Of Grass And Rain, Sunlit Moments Of Simple Peace, Also Gather In What She Is To Him.

Liebig Himself Seems To Have Occupied The Role Of A Gate, Or Sorting-demon, Such As His Younger Contemporary Clerk Maxwell Once Proposed, Helping To Concentrate Energy Into One Favored Room Of The Creation At The Expense Of Everything Else.

But On The Way Home Tonight, You Wish You'd Picked Him Up, Held Him A Bit. Just Held Him, Very Close To Your Heart, His Cheek By The Hollow Of Your Shoulder, Full Of Sleep. As It It Were You Who Could, Somehow, Save Him. For The Moment Not Caring Who You're Supposed To Be Registered As. For The Moment, Anyway, No Longer Who The Caesars Say You Are.

If Patterns Of Ones And Zeros Were 'like' Patterns Of Human Lives And Death, If Everything About An Individual Could Be Represented In A Computer Record By A Long String Of Ones And Zeros, Then What Kind Of Creature Would Be Represented By A Long String Of Lives And Deaths?