What is it about Vronsky that makes it so difficult to remain conscious? How am I to take the foreshadowing, the tick in my left eye that seems to grow in intensity until it is no longer a tick but a full-fledged shudder, an indication of pathology at such a deep level that there is no hope, really, of ever being able to un-earth and eliminate it once and for all? The only option available at this point is complete surrender and then a lifetime of rehashing the events that led me to this place – a gate nine feet high, someone pacing back and forth behind the gate in the shadows cast by poplars and other indigenous species of tree. Who is that over there and why does he keep lighting pieces of paper on fire and then waving them about above his head? Could it be that what we call communication is really just a way to isolate ourselves even further through gestures designed to seem meaningful at first glance, while still managing to withhold any information that might otherwise let us know what is at stake and who is liable to be harmed in the process? Of course I don’t mean physically, but I don’t mean emotionally either. Think of the concept of the hybrid, the thing that is both itself and something else at the same time. Or at different times, alternating times. Like an amphibian which is both reptile and fish. Or at least has the potential to turn eventually into the one and revert back finally to the other. I like that the hum produced when this occurs is very like a soothing human voice. If you listen closely enough you will begin to hear barely discernible words. Whether these words actually exist or are inserted by the mind afterward because the mind can’t help but to operate through some dim approximation of language, is anyone’s guess, and there are as many schools of thought on the issue as there are individuals who are willing to create a school of thought. So that they might be taken seriously, perhaps for the first time in their lives. So that they might have something to point to when they too are standing before an imposing gate and whoever is standing behind it, in the shadows, asks them why they are there and what they hope to achieve once they are granted access to the environs behind the gate. The limitless plains, the villages laid out as symmetrically as handsome human faces. The residents of these villages as happy and contented as if they had been allowed to reside forever in the most spectacularly fevered of all their tens of thousands of spectacularly fevered dreams.