They had already notified me there was nothing special about me, the only difference between myself and others being that I thought myself special, whereas others certainly did not. That had never crossed their minds. It seems they had burrowed an inroad into my thoughts, but I don't know how. Was I so much apart from the others and if so what more could I sacrifice to make myself the same as all these mysterious others, and less offensively at large? I had no idea that others were double amputees. The nerves strained. In my mind yawned open a chasm of hope and despair.
I yearned to cross all the intersecting lines in my dreams, but they seemed to multiply in my sleep, like more and more hoops I had to jump through. Their patterns played tricks on my mind. Were they really in my head or out there? I had no way to know.
I asked them for some days off along the river with my mind, but they said no. Too many people were still stuck in the infantry stage. They couldn't afford it for another to get loose. I asked them how they knew themselves about the intersections of all their lines and loops, but they refused to know what I was talking about. "There aren't any loops or hoops," they muttered. You do everything of out of your own free will.
I asked them how they knew this and they said that this was common sense, free facts available to anyone who had transcended crawling on their belly. This last statement of theirs made me think they still thought of me as someone who had remained, despite themselves, in the infantry stage.
I held out in the hope that they would wean me out of Sparta into Athens. I was a boor and an unsophisticate. The truth is, I'd wanted something from them, something which they were now ladling out. What had I expected?
I had only myself to blame.
I yearned to cross all the intersecting lines in my dreams, but they seemed to multiply in my sleep, like more and more hoops I had to jump through. Their patterns played tricks on my mind. Were they really in my head or out there? I had no way to know.
I asked them for some days off along the river with my mind, but they said no. Too many people were still stuck in the infantry stage. They couldn't afford it for another to get loose. I asked them how they knew themselves about the intersections of all their lines and loops, but they refused to know what I was talking about. "There aren't any loops or hoops," they muttered. You do everything of out of your own free will.
I asked them how they knew this and they said that this was common sense, free facts available to anyone who had transcended crawling on their belly. This last statement of theirs made me think they still thought of me as someone who had remained, despite themselves, in the infantry stage.
I held out in the hope that they would wean me out of Sparta into Athens. I was a boor and an unsophisticate. The truth is, I'd wanted something from them, something which they were now ladling out. What had I expected?
I had only myself to blame.
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