The Camera Is Just A Machine, Which

A Mother Never Realizes That Her Children Are No Longer Children.

He Used This Great, Sad, Motionless Face To Suggest Various Related Things: A One-track Mind Near The Track's End Of Pure Insanity; Mulish Imperturbability Under The Wildest Of Circumstances; How Dead A Human Being Can Get And Still Be Alive . . .

You've Got To Bear It In Mind That Nobody That Ever Lived Is Specially Privileged; The Axe Can Fall At Any Moment, On Any Neck, Without Any Warning Or Any Regard For Justice. You've Got To Keep Your Mind Off Pitying Your Own Rotten Luck And Setting Up Any Kind Of A Howl About It. You've Got To Remember That Things As Bad As This And A Hell Of A Lot Worse Have Happened To Millions Of People Before And That They've Come Through It And That You Will Too.

Children, Taught Either Years Beneath Their Intelligence Or Miles Wide Of Relevance To It, Or Both: Their Intelligence Becomes Hopelessly Bewildered, Drawn Off Its Centers, Bored, Or Atrophied.

And Somewhat As In Blind Night, On A Mild Sea, A Sailor May Be Made Aware Of An Iceberg, Fanged And Mortal, Bearing Invisibly Near, By The Unwarned Charm Of Its Breath, Nothingness Now Revealed Itself: That Permanent Night Upon Which The Stars In Their Expiring Generations Are Less Than The Glinting Of Gnats, And Nebulae, More Trivial Than Winter Breath; That Darkness In Which Eternity Lies Bent And Pale, A Dead Snake In A Jar, And Infinity Is The Sparkling Of A Wren Blown Out To Sea; That Inconceivable Chasm Of Invulnerable Silence In Which Cataclysms Of Galaxies Rave Mute As Amber.