How Deep And Sticky Is The Darkness

From The Time I Was Little, I'd Been Kind Of Freaked Out By The Whole Deal With Large Groups Of People. And Even Moderate - Sized Groups Of People. It's Always Made Me Very Uncomfortable. It's Such A Strange Phenomenon, What Happens To People When They're All Moving In The Same Direction, All Chanting The Same Tune, The Same Line Of Slogans Or Something. That Stuff Always Seems Very Alien And Bizarre To Me, And Kind Of Scary.

They Thought To Use And Shame Me But I Win Out By Nature, Because A True Freak Cannot Be Made. A True Freak Must Be Born.

It Is, I Suppose, The Common Grief Of Children At Having To Protect Their Parents From Reality. It Is Bitter For The Young To See What Awful Innocence Adults Grow Into, That Terrible Vulnerability That Must Be Sheltered From The Rodent Mire Of Childhood.

In Our Struggle To Restrain The Violence And Contain The Damage, We Tend To Forget That The Human Capacity For Aggression Is More Than A Monstrous Defect, That It Is Also A Crucial Survival Tool.

Beside Mama, In My Own Folding Chair, With My Feet Sticking Out In Front Of Me, I Thought About My Own Innards. Just A Few Months Before I'd Had No Idea Whether My Reproductive Equipment Worked. There Was No Evidence. But That Week I Had Become A Full-fledged Bleeder And Was Still Absorbed By This First Change In Myself That I Had Ever Noticed. The Click And Buzz Of My Synapses Kept Making The Same Connection. If You Can Change, You Can Also End. Death Had Always Been A Theory To Me. Now I Knew. The Terror Hurt Good And I Nursed It And Played It Like A Loose Tooth.