Fred Nietzsche Might Have Been a Difficult Employer

“Do not let anyone suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough skeptic, and have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato the artist, which is traditional among scholars.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (1889).

The quote above accompanied the following cartoon on one of my favorite Facebook pages, Nietzsche Internet Defense Force. I have no idea to whom the copyright is attributed, only that it isn’t mine.

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Plato, either, although I did find his Allegory of the Cave apt, if risibly overwrought as a metaphor.

Behold, the HOLLYHOCKALYPSE!

These tall gangly flowers grow tall on the south face of my house, and are generally seen throughout Monte Vista. The town of Saguache, just up the road from us on US 285, is having a festival dedicated to these beauties on Saturday. They even have a contest for best-looking yard, something I’d like to see a lot of towns get behind, mine included.

What brings us to this post is a day this week when I was wandering around the southwest part of town on my way to Chapman Park, and encountered this host of red, white, pink, and green monsters, looking for all the world like a mob of tall flower-faced aliens massed along the side of one yard.

I must say, I am rather taken by these things. They’re big, they’re sturdy, and they stay blooming and beautiful for weeks. They’re a nice touch to the short-but-sweet growing season here in the San Luis Valley.

Yes, this is eye-level.

What especially impressed me about this scene was the demonstration of toughness, the stalks coming right out of the seams of the curb and sidewalk. It’s a living parable, a wordless tale of encouragement from life itself.

Imagine the shots I would have gotten with a good DSLR as opposed to a pocket digital. I should start a Patreon. 

The Cats of Summer 2017

Yes, this still isn’t a cat blog. I just had a story and some pictures to go with it, so....

Mama Kitty (far right) watches her two white kittens.

The first thing I noticed about Big Pink when we first visited it last summer—aside from the fact that it was going to need a lot of work—was a big orange cat walking through the backyard like he owned the place. Which, in a way, he did. He was one of the numerous feral cats on our side of Monte Vista that occasionally took refuge in and around the wood-framed chicken-wire cage in the northeast corner of our back yard.

I haven’t seen this many cats roaming around a neighborhood since I used to live in the old working class/college student neighborhood south of Rosewood Drive in Columbia, SC. Even most of those belonged to people. These cats are completely free, and with the exception of that one very special kitten who came up to us on a moonlit night in September, they are very wary of humans. It was nearly a year before I learned how they survived, even in the deepest, snowiest, below-zero pits of the long San Luis Valley winter.

From left to right, the Yeti and Clarence the Cross-Eyed Siamese keeping watch from atop a rail of the chicken-wire cage in our backyard.

The answer to that mystery came as part of the answer to another mystery, when the cats started disappearing. I had names for most of them, and when I no longer saw the Yeti (big, raggedy white cat), Tomzilla (large orange tabby), or Tuxedo Rags, or Clarence the Cross-Eyed Siamese, or Mama Kitty, or any of the various kittens that showed up after the last snow, I was becoming concerned. Was Monte Vista Animal Control finally getting serious about the feral cat issue? This couldn’t be the case, as I had read that the man  in charge of Animal Control had recently resigned. 

One evening I saw the orange female we call Mama Kitty (we’re certain she’s Luna Toonie’s mom) trotting about the perimeter of our house, looking for her two white kittens. It was heartbreaking to watch.

Then Mama Kitty disappeared.

I’d figured that was it for the feral cats here on my side of Monte Vista. I could only hope they met a more-or-less humane end.

This photo, as with the other depicting these cats, was taken after they began returning to their old haunts. Not all of them are in evidence, though.

Then Clarence showed up again. I almost didn’t recognize him because his once-matted fur had been cleaned and groomed. It was at a community picnic that I met the neighbor who had the answer to these mysteries—and was indeed responsible for them. 

When a veterinarian in Alamosa who works with these ferals ran a week-long special on spayings and neuterings, our neighbor began setting traps for the cats. She got every one she could, but not all of them. She noted one was already pregnant, although she did catch the orange Mama Kitty before she could get knocked up again. That was good to know.

In course of conversation I learned that the cats use several of the many abandoned houses about our neighborhood for shelter during the worst weather. Also, there are people who leave bowls of food out, including the neighbor.

Still, there will be some suffering. There already is some suffering, as I note that the cats that have come back have not put back on their weight. They were already losing weight before the great mass trap-neuter-release; I suspect a food source has either run out or been closed to them.

This is the best photo I have of Tuxedo Rags, from when he crossed our porch last January. He was looking pretty beat-up just before he disappeared. He’s also one of the few who has not returned to the yard. I suspect he may have been put down.

To die of “natural causes” as a feral means to either get run over by a car, mauled to death by a dog or a rival cat, freeze, die of poisoning, or starve. I’m sure I’ve missed some. None of these are pleasant, painless deaths.

And yet, they are free. I’d link to the post if I could remember any keywords, but someone once posed the question of whether the shorter lifespans of outdoor cats weren’t of far better quality than those who spent their days indoors, as our five cats do. For as red of fang and claw as nature is, so are the ferals, and enjoy the opportunity to exercise those very instincts with which they were born. Whereas our cats spend their days lounging about floors and furniture when they’re not looking longingly through the window to a world denied them.

Miss Luna Toonie here literally came out of the night and chose us as her family. Although she shows the normal curiosity for what goes on outside, she doesn’t like actually being outside. It’s safe to say this one has no regrets.

It’s one of those things for which there are no pat answers. All we can do is leave a bowl of food out on the porch, and hope the ones who need it worst find it first.

Backtalking the Negativity

Reclaiming motivational themes from demotivational memes for the ultimate contrarian experience. Whatever that meant.

Anyway, so I saw this cartoon, and was thus vexed. I get so tired of edgy negativity for edgy negativity’s sake. Especially when the view expressed is flat wrong:

Comic by Zach Weinersmith from his Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal site. Not hating on the man or his work, just the attitude here.

This pictorial representation of a happy moment comes alive every time it is viewed. That the moment is fictive makes no difference; the viewer recognizes the joy in the family running along the beach. The sentiment is real. The sentiment animates the characters we see in the picture. They may have had no real past, but so long as the image exists to be viewed, the father and his two children will live on into the future. 

The intended humor is how the caption supposedly demolishes the happiness depicted here. Except that it doesn’t. For me, this cartoon speaks to what remains of the spirit of the little boy within me who feels a sense of the epic in the mundane act of visiting the beach with his family. Who can wring the maximum amount of happiness from a crashing wave, or a bowl of ice cream.

“Less than dead, they never were”? More like, “More than alive, they would outlive their creator, and remind all with eyes to see and brains to comprehend that there is still joy to be had in this life, that for all the terrible things that happen, fathers still run with their children on sunset beaches, making fond memories they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. You could do the same, if you choose.”

Most people don’t, of course, but that’s on them. How are you doin’?

R.I.P., George A. Romero

One of the great underappreciated and under-utilized talents of film condemned to be remembered for one and one (albeit genius) thing only. To paraphrase the punchline of an obscene joke, “But do they recognize me for writing and directing one of the most original and moving vampire films of all time? No, you raise one hungry corpse....”

Not that there’s anything wrong at all with being the genius who created an entire supernatural sub-genre because he was angry with the annus horribilis that was 1968, but I’ve noticed more than a few egregious omissions about the long, strange career of George A. Romero. 

Anything and everything you’re afraid of, coming for you. Relentless, never sleeping, always coming for you. And when they get their cold, dead hands on you....

My favorite Seldom-Told Tale is that Romero got his start working as a cameraman for Fred Rogers when Mister Roger’s Neighborhood was still a local Pittsburgh show. Mr. Rogers was well aware of his cameraman’s horror film project, and while he expressed no disapproval, he did forbid Romero from using one of the actresses from the Neighborhood in his film. That aside, Romero and Rogers remained friends long after Romero went on to full-time directing, with Rogers claiming he “enjoyed” Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead. 

Although it’s a great tale of unlikely friendship, what shocked me in the last couple of obits I read was the lack of mention of Romero’s Tales from the Darkside series that dominated 1980s late-night TV. Also unmentioned is what’s generally considered his best all-around film, zombie or not, the melancholy vampire drama, Martin. 

George A. Romero, like his friend and mentor Fred Rogers, had a lot of heart, and the horror of his vision comes from his rage and frustration at those things about us that simply should not be, but are. “Maybe [the living dead] are God’s way of showing us what hate looks like,” says a character in 1985s Day of the Dead. Actually, it’s just one way of looking at Romero’s supreme creation, that most macabre modern literary device of the reanimated cadaver that attacks and eats the living. If you had to boil down Romero’s entire oeuvre to one line, it would be to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The darkness comes at us not from the stars, my dear Horatio, but from within ourselves.”

Bantering with Nietzsche's 10 Rules for Writers

“Be vewwy quiet. I am hunting nihilists.”

I have yet to figure out what the Facebook page Freud Quotes and its many affiliates are up to. So far as I can ascertain, it seems to be a vehicle for marketing T-shirts with quotes like “I prefer not to” and philosophy books by various authors and publishers—although the links to those books, notably, are not to the Amazon platform, but to something called Book Depository.com.

They do run decent articles on their Web site from time to time, though, and this one featuring a listicle from history’s most misunderstood philosopher, Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, caught my attention. It turns out Nietzsche was involved with a lady Russian intellectual by name of Lou Andreas-Salomé, with whom he lived, then traded correspondence with for a time. Years after they parted ways (Nietzsche allegedly entertained unrequited affections for her), Andreas-Salomé would write a book praising Nietzsche and his work. And somewhere in the book is an Internet-ready listicle of “10 Rules for Writers.”

1. Of prime necessity is life: a style should live.

It should at least move. I’ll enjoy the most mechanically written story so long as all the gears mesh and things run smoothly. A well-written pulp actioner is a thing of joy and beauty to be cherished forever.

2. Style should be suited to the specific person with whom you wish to communicate. (The law of mutual relation.)

 In other words, know your audience. This should go without saying, but some people, I suppose, need reminding.

3. First, one must determine precisely “what-and-what do I wish to say and present,” before you may write. Writing must be mimicry.

These two sentences make no sense together. Know what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it. Gotcha. “Writing must be mimicry.” Huh? Of what? Whom? Why?

4. Since the writer lacks many of the speaker’s means, he must in general have for his model a very expressive kind of presentation of necessity, the written copy will appear much paler.

“[A] very expressive kind of presentation of necessity....” This is either a bad translation or a flat-out bad sentence. From what I can gather, Nietzsche believes that oratory is better than the printed word, and that one’s writing should be as expressive as oratory, even if the end result still seems inferior to oratory. We’ll have to agree to disagree. 

5. The richness of life reveals itself through a richness of gestures. One must learn to feel everything — the length and retarding of sentences, interpunctuations, the choice of words, the pausing, the sequence of arguments — like gestures.

Finally, Nietzsche brings us news we can use—or in my case, recognize as useful. For me, the most important decisions I’ve made as a writer had to do with punctuation, e.g., whether or not to use semi-colons and exclamation marks (yes) and how often (when in doubt, no). Punctuation is the heartbeat, the pulse, the very breath of the living style one seeks to create. Or, for my part, one that simply works.

My analogy of how to make a style come to life is that of the perfectly constructed computer that acquires sentience. Any great work of art could be thought of as an artificially created intelligence, given that they seem to astonish and surpass the creator past a certain point, how often the work becomes something beyond than what the creator originally envisioned. Get all the mechanical parts working right, and let the life come to your writing. You can’t force it otherwise.

6. Be careful with periods! Only those people who also have long duration of breath while speaking are entitled to periods. With most people, the period is a matter of affectation.

I would have thought that people short of breath would have more need of periods, but, hey, whatever. The notion that the necessary end of a completed thought is an affectation, however, tells me Nietzsche’s famed dementia of his final years is kicking in. Andreas-Salomé published this listicle several years after his admittance to the nuthouse.

7. Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.

Style being, of course, the finished product. This echoes the diktat of the first rule, and reverberates with my commentary on the fifth. At this point, we’re like George Carlin whittling down the Ten Commandments in the Bible.

8. The more abstract a truth which one wishes to teach, the more one must first entice the senses.

Or, in other words, “rhetoric, not dialectic.” Aristotle understood that lizard-blooded logic alone does not persuade, hence rhetoric. To turn Rule #7 on its head—and to express this more clearly for those unfamiliar with the terms and concepts—it’s as important to make your audience feel your argument/ story it as think it.

As envisioned metaphorically.

9. Strategy on the part of the good writer of prose consists of choosing his means for stepping close to poetry but never stepping into it.

I like to think of writing styles on a spectrum from full on baroque like F. Scott Fitzgerald at his Great Gatsby peak to more acetic aesthetic of Ernest Hemingway in his best short stories. For two favorite examples, Ray Bradbury’s prose leaned Fitzgerald; Charles Bukowski leaned Hemingway. 

Interestingly—maybe even ironically (yeah, I know)—it was Bukowski who was the real poet of the two. Bradbury’s attempts at actual poetry were tin-foil chewing awful, utilizing far, far too many words to describe a single throwaway image. The power of Bukowski’s poetry was such that he captured entire scenes from his life in only so many well-crafted stanzas. One three-page poem could deliver as much information as a 40-page novelette.

That said, both Bukowski and Bradbury were masters of prose craft, and therefore fine examples of how Nietzsche’s ninth rule can work for two different kinds of writers, the former a poet who could write expert prose and fiction, the latter a fantasy writer who wrote poetically.  

10. It is not good manners or clever to deprive one’s reader of the most obvious objections. It is very good manners and very clever to leave it to one’s reader alone to pronounce the ultimate quintessence of our wisdom.

Fittingly, we end on yet another one of those rules you have to read over three times to make sure you understand what Nietzsche is talking about. “Obvious objections?” To what? The writer’s work? What objections? How are they obvious? 

The second part makes sense inasmuch as we’re talking about getting the reader to internalize what the writer is talking about, without the writer “pronouncing” it for them. Great. Sounds like a plan. So how do we do this?

Never mind. I’ll have to learn by doing. I’ve got to get back to work.

Dress comfortably, drink plenty of fluids. That’s all I got.

Our First Rodeo

Together, that is. In Colorado’s San Luis Valley....

My wife didn’t think she had seen a rodeo before, but her mother told her during their weekly phone conversation that she had, but was apparently too little to remember.

I recalled seeing one at the Carolina Coliseum in Columbia, South Carolina, as a boy in the early to mid-1970s. I was impressed by the rough-and-tough filth of it all, all that powdered dung kicked up in the air and no one caring, along with the mad courage of the rodeo clowns. I remember one diving into a barrel with no time to spare, the audience laughing as he narrowly escaped getting gored by an angry bull, so the rider and the crew could get away. 

Painting on the wall outside of Ski-Hi Arena. A multi-purpose building, we ran across some people playing pickle ball in a small gymnasium room.

Decades later, in 2010, I made the mistake of volunteering to work security for the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo in Colorado Springs. To be fair, I might have enjoyed it more had I paid and watched it. Instead I suffered for the paranoia of a very disorganized bunch who were convinced PETA was sending in brigades of activists to throw “liquid substances” on the animals. Therefore, I had to check the incoming drink cups of everyone—everyone—who walked through my entrance of the stadium.

This went about as well as one might expect with all the regular folk, and they were all regular folk, not one weasel-eyed hippie among them. Compounding the misery was one particularly yappy, meddlesome old man going around reassigning people throughout the event to different entrances, based on his view on which ones were the most vulnerable. This view changed constantly, in as much time as it took him to walk from group to group, sending people different places, because they were volunteers, he worked for the rodeo, and they had to listen to him.

One of the other people in charge had the temerity to raise his voice at me in the course of asking me what I was doing at another location other than the one he’d assigned me. As I explained he made a face that told me he knew just what had happened, and I told him maybe he ought to raise his voice at the old man. He did what I now wished I had done the moment that fool opened his mouth: walked away without a word. 

Oh, yeah, and at the end of the day, for all the ill-will we endured making people open the tops of their Big Gulps and whatnot, nothing. No PETA pranking. Not so much as a thank you, either. I’d have been happy with a bottle of water; it was hot that day, even in the shade of the apron about the arena, but with all those people pushing in.

Bottom line, never again on Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Days. With respect to the cowboys, cowgirls, cowhands, etc. who work hard, and pay out the nose in registration fees to make the actual show happen, I would not support such an obtuse mess of an organization again. 

It’s always sunnier on the other side of the arena.

I follow various local Facebook pages offering news on events in Monte Vista and the San Luis Valley, and learned there was a four-Sunday series of rodeos a little over a mile from my house at the Ski-Hi Arena (pronounced sky-high; yes, I know) where the bigger San Luis Valley Stampede rodeo series convenes the last weekend of every July. Admission was only five dollars each, and if the weather was fine, we could walk there. Which it was, and we did, to the final show of the “Spring in the Valley” rodeo series on 21 May.

The walk went well, but once at the arena (it’s not large enough to be called a stadium), we had to ask where we went to pay our admittance. We walked up the south side of the stands where a young woman sat on one of the long aluminium bench seats. It turns out she was taking the money for tickets. And they only took cash. I had just enough change in my pockets to get us in. 

This rodeo didn’t have made up clowns, but these men  along the fence would serve the same function during the bull riding. Among them was a burly 12-year-old doing the equivalent of his internship.

Ironic, eh? I’m an old guy, and I expect everyone to have a smartphone with a square to take my plastic. And I don’t even own a smartphone, because what on earth would this old guy who lives in front of a 26-inch desktop monitor, who only leaves the house to go to the grocery store, the liquor store, or his favorite restaurant, do with one?

I moved the camera a little to the left to catch a view of the omnipresent Sange de Cristo Mountains in the background.

We took our places in the empty stands. At once we wished we’d gone over to the south-facing stands across the arena, but it looked to be well-shaded, too. Which is as it should be, given that the biggest rodeo is in July. This was May, and even as far as the weekend before Memorial Day Weekend, it pays to bring a jacket with you in this part of Colorado. What we hadn’t noticed on our mile-long walk up became most apparent while we were trying to sit still.

People trickled into the stands, although not as many as I’d have expected/liked to have seen for a show that cost all of $5 USD to enter. I suppose this rodeo organization makes its money from participant registration fees, along with the sponsorships. We watched as a man driving a red tractor groomed the fields as we waited for the show to begin.

In a dramatic flourish, the emcee raced out to the middle of the field and skidded to a halt on his horse. Through the magic of wireless technology he announced the lineup while riding around the ring. 

Something I’d forgotten that I might see: a young, fresh-faced Sweetheart of the Rodeo showing the flag before the National Anthem. Given the near-unbelievable coarseness of our culture today, watching this smartly dressed cowgirl ride around the arena with the flag was like watching a re-enactment of a more wholesome age. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what it was. A beautiful anachronism I was proud to stand and remove my hat for.

The opening contest was bull-riding. A local favorite from Monte Vista was one of two who managed to stay on board for the requisite eight seconds.

They had breaks in which children from the stands were invited to come down and remove the ribbon attached to the tail of a running calf or sheep.

The next major event involved two cowpunchers—often a man and a woman, but not always—riding in tandem to lasso a calf running across the length of the arena. It held our interest well enough, but as you can see in the above photo, the sky had clouded. Absent sunlight, the temperature drops rapidly at 7,600 feet. The freshening winds drove us out of our seats, and we began our walk home.

Still, this was a positive experience I wish more people attended. Of course, we have the San Luis Valley (SLV) Ski-Hi Stampede to look forward on the last weekend in July. Billed as the oldest rodeo in Colorado, I can testify from my inaugural experience last year that it’s the biggest party of the year in Monte Vista, with parades on Friday and Saturday, fireworks, and all kinds of events, fundraising dinners, etc., piggybacking on the appeal of the rodeo itself. I hope I can take in some actual bull-riding this year.

Thoughts on Today’s Sermon, Whatever That Was About

Seriously, did you ever sit there in church, and it’s time for the sermon, and it starts off okay...you’re thinking, “Hey, this is all right. Maybe I’ll finally grow up a bit and learn to listen to these things.” But then the man at the pulpit keeps talking...and talking...until you forget how he even started. You’re not even sure what he’s talking about right now. You just want this to be over. 

Honestly, if your name isn’t George Carlin or Richard Pryor, you’ve got no business running your mouth at people for 15-25 minutes straight. Don’t even get me started about teachers at school who can yap-yap-yappity-yap nonstop for 50 minutes, and then get annoyed when their time is up, because it physically distresses these sick, pathological narcissists to give up their captive audiences. 

What’s sad is that preachers have a message to preach, and most of the ones I’ve met don’t have the sadistic streak I’ve seen in teachers and assistant professors. But somehow it seems to be an inviolable rule that the sermon can be no less than 20 minutes long. I know that, back in the day, sermons—or any speech by a politician, by that matter—could go on for hours. Hours. And people sat there and...listened? It doesn’t seem possible after a while. 

Don’t even think of blaming this on the supposedly shortened attention spans of our electronic age. Humans weren’t meant to endure such prolonged torture. The next time you sit through a sermon, and it gets to the part where you doubt you’re even hearing it in your native language anymore, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It feels wrong, because it is wrong.

It Was Sixty Years Ago Today

It was only the beginning of the greatest artistic collaboration in Western culture in the last century or three. Attention must be paid. 

July 6 fell on a Sunday 60 years ago. A church in the northern port city of Liverpool, England had an afternoon outdoor party, where they let the young folk play their skiffle music — a kind of rocked-up country sound that was all the rage in England at a time when New York and Los Angeles media didn’t yet possess the means to dictate taste and fashion to every corner of the world. A 15-year old boy mulling around the audience looked up and saw these kids on the stage, looking just as they do in the photo below, taken at that very event. The bandleader was 16-year-old John Lennon (that’s him in the middle, ten long years away from the mutton-chop sideburns and granny glasses of Sgt. Pepper), who lived in the nicer side of town with his aunt because of some family issues. Paul wanted in on the band, so he borrowed a guitar from someone and played “20-Flight Rock” for John. The two got along well enough, so Paul was in, and the most momentous Sunday outdoor church party in modern history came to pass. Sixty years ago today....

So much began right here among these children.

Later, Paul would suggest this kid he rode with on the schoolbus to come in — yeah, he’s only 14 years old, but listen, he plays a mean guitar. John was skeptical, but George Harrison played a notoriously difficult instrumental piece called “Raunchy,” and not only earned his place in the band, but as lead guitarist, as he was demonstrably more skilled and confident in his playing than either John or Paul. (Paul later got stuck playing bass because George was too good not to be on guitar, and bandleader John wasn’t giving up his ax. So Paul took up the bass, developed his own style of playing, and set the example for bass-playing frontmen for half a century on forward.)

I mention all this because one thing all the documentaries and TV specials and retrospectives always fail to get across is how young they were when they all met. They were mere boys, from the not-so-great areas of a not-so-great town, who, running on nothing more than their enthusiasm for playing and singing would go on to become the most influential singers and songwriters of the 20th century, and beyond. And it all started at this church party. Sixty years ago today.

A Study of the Resting Bitch Face in 19th Century Portraiture

I’m sure someone somewhere has a PhD. in this.

The term “resting bitch face” refers to the hard-eyed, tight-lipped look many women, especially attractive ones, consciously or unconsciously adopt by way of discouraging unwanted male attention. The meme below, featuring actress Vivien Leigh in character for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind, serves a fine example. 

It’s important to note that this look cuts across social classes; even working class girls do this. It’s likely an innate survival mechanism that goes all the way back.   

Which brings me to this striking portrait from the History & Art Facebook page. What’s striking is that I don’t get the feeling this is resting bitch face. We can’t know if this is due to a) the painter, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, disliking his subject, and therefore painting her in an unflattering manner, b) the painter not being very good at what he does, and therefore making this anonymous young lady look like a malevolent she-demon by virtue of his incompetence with shading about the eyes, or, c) this young lady actually looked like this, and may God have mercy on our souls.

That a bird trusts to rest on her shoulder while her dark eyes glower threats of death and other unpleasantries is even more jarring. Perhaps it whispers in her mistress’ ear of the whereabouts of her rival for the young lord’s attentions, reporting the status of her plan to destroy that poor woman in body and soul. Seriously, this young lady is not someone I would turn my back on as I approached a descending staircase. I would decline all offers of food and drink. Upon encountering such a creature, I would back away with forced smile and an “excuse me” and pray she never learned my name, or where I lived. 

If indeed “the eyes are the windows to the soul” then what is the nature of the darkness there on the other side, so thick that it pushes out from around the panes, denying all but the faintest light between brow and cheekbone?