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Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven. I don't feel constant joy, I say to my friend, who laughs. She prepares for death, as we all ought. Only on the other side, she says, the other side. To take sides is to take them where, like logs in a truck bed, or the mirror to the world that's never fixed. My students didn't know the word “bark” in “wandering bark,” thought Shakespeare might be referring to a stray dog. That does change things, the ever-fixèd mark a bone, the dying poet having writ on Kibbles. A boy stands on Lanikai beach in Sunday best for his annual photo. Radhika calls it his “birthday suit.” When I say what that means, she laughs. Is it Mormons who stand on the corner asking for money? Sangha wonders. No, they're the men in narrow black ties. Bias is natural, Michael says, but it's how we process it that matters. To condescend is not to set a cross on fire. Remember that.

--1 February 2015