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Page 221

You and I are the gods who create whatever universe
is real to us (or unreal, because we deny our own role in its creation).
That, perhaps, is what Kim knew, though Jessica
only suspected it, the instant she saw Darrell
so insouciantly toss his jacket onto the couch, shrug,
and quietly, staring unashamedly at her cleavage, clearly
visible in the upper V of her bathrobe, say
"c'mere." I say "perhaps," because in his (or His) own universe,
a god can afford the luxuries of polite uncertainties and
not knowing everything until the last sentence of the last page.

We do it, but don't know we do it. Our word, our thought
is LAW-di-daw. So when you say, "Let there be the
perfect man/woman for me, standing before me now,
loving me," there, instantly he or she (or he/she or she/he or s/he
or it or s/h/it!) is -- there and gone in a flash, obscured as soon
as half-realized (mistaken for a futile wish) by our almost
simultaneous thought that "of course, this is ridiculous and
can never happen." And that is what remains with us,
like a faint cloud on our horizon -- the perfect lover who,
of course, can never happen.

Our lives ARE magic. We get what we wish for.
We would wish for the ability to wish (and wish only) for
what we wish for, but when we think of this, we think too
of the last time we wished the excruciatingly turtlish driver
of the car ahead of us, blocking the left lane, would curl up
with a grimace, then straighten out stiff and dead of that
awful sounding thing, a myocardial infarction -- but somehow
make it to the shoulder in the process...oh, clearly it wouldn't do
to have wishes come true.

(And so each wish, as soon as wished, is realized, then
gone with the wind: WHISHHH!)

Note: Stanza 2: "LAW-di-daw" puns "la-di-da", an old way to express jaunty, aristocratic mockery of foppishness.

In a fit of grammatical/political correctness, I decided to extend the priggishness of "s/he" to neuter, since why should she's and he's be treated as superior to it's? I got a kick out of the result: "s/h/it", which is what I want to say about anti-sexist grammarians. (But let's not disrespect shit, which is as good a thing as any he or she. It's just nutrient-challenged or something. La-di-da!)

Stanza 3: If you DO succeed in wishing without reservation that the slow-moving driver who hogs the road would drop dead, do be sure to include the qualifier that the driver gets off the road and onto the shoulder first!

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