I wish I could fully describe the feeling that throbs in the back of my head--pry open my torso, peel back the cracked plating and show you my heart. It's right there, that pewter little bit above the coiled loops of intestine and below the scorched dip of windpipe. Can't you see it--oh, it's gone? Forgive me; sometimes it does that. It disconnects from the center and travels to places elsewhere, crawling away from threats like some obscene jellyfish, some primordial thing crying lamely out for an escape from vague, dully sensed threats. You can try to grasp it and shove it back under the rock from whence it came, screw it back into place like a broken lightbulb, but it still wanders. A crusted, crumbling thing, not close to diamond or gold but more like metal, like copper conducting sparks of something great but never knowing it, never actually being it.

I must have left it behind at one of the trash piles. If that's the case then I don't need to worry; it'll turn up eventually and I'll get it back someday. Nobody's going to steal it...what good is a heart in D10? If there is an afterlife, if there is a hell, then this is the closest allegory to it that will ever slash at the face of this planet. Things happen every day that you could...couldn't even imagine. Values and morals take a backseat to the id, the ever-demanding id, and the life and death drives are shredded and clumsily melded together.

Better yet, it's with Jack and Jill, in America...I hope they're okay. I hope they understand why I can't talk to them, and that they know that I'm not abandoning them...I'd never abandon them. Every night, I can only imagine what they are doing, what they're learning and what they think about it. Jill, my little scientist: what have you analyzed? Have you figured out any answers to your questions, or have they only multiplied and formed into a theory, a hypothesis? Jack, my artist and poet: are you in touch with the tune of things, as you say? What have you made--has it made you?
My kids are growing up, day by day, and I'm not there...