The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from Earth’s soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here—kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and trying to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken… plastic saxophone reed sounds of unnatural timbre, shampoo bottle ego-image, Cracker Jack prize one-shot amusement, home appliance casing fairing for winds of cognition, baby bottles tranquilization, meat packages disguise of slaughter, dry-cleaning bags infant strangulation, garden hoses feeding endlessly the desert… but to bring them together, in their slick persistence and our preterition… to make sense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replication, so much waste… .

Lucky Bland, to be free of it. One night he called his whole family together around the davenport in the study. Lyle, Jr. came in from Houston, shivering with first-stage grippe from contact with a world where air-conditioning is not so essential to life. Clara drove down from Bennington and Buddy rode the MTA in from Cambridge. “As you know,” Bland announced, “I have been taking these little trips lately.” He was wearing a simple white smock, and holding a red rose. He looked unearthly, all were later to agree: his skin and eyes had a clarity which is seldom encountered, except on certain spring days, at certain latitudes, just before sunrise. “I have found,” he continued, “that each time out, I have been traveling farther and farther. Tonight, I am going out for good. That is, I am not coming back. So I wanted to say good-by to you all, and let you know that you’ll be provided for.” He’d been to see his friend Coolidge (“Hot”) Short, of the State Street law firm of Salitieri, Poore, Nash, De Brutus, and Short, and made sure all the family finances were in perfect order. “I want you to know that I love you all. I’d stay here if I could, but I have to go. I hope you can understand.”

One by one, his family came up to say good-by. Hugs, kisses, handshakes done, Bland sank back into that davenport’s last embrace, closed his eyes with a dim smile… . After a bit he felt himself beginning to rise. Those watching disagreed about the exact moment. Around 9:30 Buddy left to see The Bride of Frankenstein, and Mrs. Bland covered the serene face with a dusty chintz drape she’d received from a cousin who had never understood her taste.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

A windy night. The lids of GI cans blow clanging across the parade ground. Sentries in their idleness are practicing Queen Anne salutes. Sometimes gusts of wind come that rock the jeeps on their springs, even the empty deuce ’n’ a halfs and civilian bobtail rigs—shock absorbers groan, deeply, in discomfort… in the peaks of wind, living pine trees move, lined above the last sand dropoff into the North Sea… .