(I'm fighting a dark force in Rango, loving nature in him, through him, and yet fighting the destructions of nature. When my life culminates in a heaven of passion, it is most dangerously balanced over a precipice. The further I seek to soar into the dream, the essence, touching the vaults of the sky, the tighter does the cord of reality press my neck. Will I break seeking to rescue Rango? Fatigue of the heart and body...

Intermittently I see and feel the dampness, poverty, a sick Zora, food on the table with wine stains, cigarette ashes, and bread crumbs of past meals. Only now and then do I notice the rust in the stove, the leak in the roof, the rain on the rug, the fire that has gone out, the sour wine in a cup. And thus I descend through trap doors without falling into a trap but knowing there is another Rango I cannot see, the one who lives with Zora, who awaits to appear in the proper lighting. And I am afraid, afraid of pain... Now I understand why I loved Paul...because he was afraid. When we lay down and caressed each other we caressed this self-same fear and understood it, under the blanket, fear of violence. We recognized it in the dark, with our hands and our mouths. We touched it and were moved by it, because it was our secret which we shared through the body. Everyone says: you must take sides, choose a political party, choose a philosophy, choose a dogma... I chose the dream of human love. Whatever I ally myself to is to be close to my love. With it I hope to defeat tragedy, to defeat violence. I dance, I sew, I mend, I cook for the sake of this dream. In this dream nobody dies, nobody is sick, nobody separates. I love and dance with my dream unfurled, trusting darkness, trusting the labyrinth, into the furnaces of love. Some say: the dream is escape. Some say: the dream is madness. Some say: the dream is sickness. It will betray you. The Rango I see is not the one Zora sees, or the world sees. This is the witchcraft of love. You can take sides in religion, you can take sides in history, and there are others with you, you are not alone. But when you take the side of love, the opium of love, you are alone. For the doctors call the dream a symptom, the historians escape, the philosophers a drug, and even your lover will not make the perilous journey with you... Hang your dream of love on the mast of this barge of caresses...a flag of fire...)

The enemy was not outside as Rango believed.

What he most wanted to avoid, which was that Djuna should remember her days with Paul, or desire Paul's return, or yearn for his presence, was the very feeling he caused by his violence.