CONFESSIONS

There is something interesting about this geography, if factual - a place in Western America where four states meet. The traveler once mentioned this spot, a tiny dot like a bullseye's, where (if true) Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico intersect, and with one step, one magical step, standing with one unmoving foot on that magical spot, you will be in four different states at the same time.

(Let us stretch this geographical magic with one more umph, if a key, one more octave. What if this geography occurs someplace(s) wherein time difference dwells as well? Alas, standing there like a statue you are simultaneously not just in different places, but boy, in different times.)

That spot, the intersection of the four states, sounds spiritual to me if only because it reminds me of the cross, the targetted center being the spot where you stand, that spot being the berth of your self where the four states take part of you, in an ideal world, share and share alike.

Patience is genius, bear with me.

Stand at the center. Close your eyes. Be yourself.

In this spiritual situation you are in, bless your soul, the four states surrounding you and partaking you are actually four questions that may break the barrier of our strangeness, questions I encountered from the last four books I read, questions that hopefully will give rise to the beatitude of THIS knowledge. In this regard please answer them in a way you are most comfortable with.

The first question is paraphrased from Arnold Weinstein's beginning sentence in A Scream Goes Through the House (the same question he once asked his CompLit class at Brown U on its first day); the second, from Nancy Malone's The Spirituality of Reading; the third, from JM Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello; and fourth, derived from a statement by Jon Frazier in The Best American Essays of 2003.

My dear friends, here are the four questions, feel free, don't think of me as an intruder, but if you please care to share, then pray tell:

1. Are you hurting now?
2. Are you in touch with your thoughts?
3. What do you believe in?
4. Is death your distraction?

Thanks, and true peace to all.