But whilst ‘twas in my covered corner o’ the universe, I would see that novel sitting there on the edge of my vanity—a book so darkly divergent from other books--beckoning me again to peruse it…a myriad of emotions would I have when it caught my glance, such that the worlds within would come rushing back to me all-too-living and hurtful, thingified, reified… And when I was away from that arena, the author’s hard-searing words would then sometimes, tiptoe n’ tap-tap-tap on my cognitive shoulder until I whirled my little-miss-teeny-Angli/Roman C. ideologies ‘round to square with them…I couldn’t believe that someone had had both the soul and stomach to have written all of that…and, though fiction, the deepest haunt was that I did want to believe--but sneaking-feeling-felt--that it could be any/all of it true…

If I would be kind enough to quote to you the lines--the lines that hailed from that tumult of a thick-reamed morality treatise?  Nay--I would not print them here if I could, so raw and soul-rending were some of they…thankfully, the big-girl mind simply will not do itself such a disservice as to recall (all) of them. Generally, I will simply state that they taught me the lessons of toxic in non-real-time--neatly, nastily revealing to me one universal truth: Some hurt as they are hurt, unlove as they are unloved…they pay forward their pains to others, their equation forever slanted by the twisting things that came before. So, in this conflict-res/ADR/pax context--how can you negotiate with these? Mediate amongst these? Broker peace between/w/-one-of these? We who are, or have been, practitioners have seen these across wood-of-all-grades, paper, and steel--their eyes full of road ice or the foul grit of dirty rock salt…mouths scripted or free-lipping, i.e., ‘off-the-cuff’, spewing chunks of unspeakable, unthinkable unmercy…a quick glance through them easily procuring a living unstillness such as could siphon the tonal breath out of sound…relentlessly unreasonable, unwilling hindrances to settlement, obstacles to e’eryone and e’erything in their human path, these—even to their very selves. Well. Millions are spent by ADR, Conflict Resolution, and Peace practitioners—every same new year and its progeny--on seminars n’ retreats n’ books n’ workshops, all writ/wrought by our cognoscenti in attempts to uncloak the secret code of how to deal with these at the deliberating table…and I say may it continue—and, further, that if ye believe that ye are the keeper of the complex negotiations/resolutions key, then set your theories to bytes and in ’09 produce it…

For the rest reasonably turn to those who call themselves ‘called’--to conjure the answer to their dilemmas, deliberations, and disputes…and if we have it not—the sufficient, securing reply--then the underside of all histories surely bears out what could be their attendant unwelcome act(s) or omission(s). Pray for pax—in all things--’09.