He was Take-Man, dark beneath the orange glow of the October dusk. Take-Man, his heartbeat the engine tick; Take-Man, his laugh the sickening crumple of metal meeting metal at 65 miles per hour; Take-Man, whose teeth had the shine of razorwire and whose voice was the rattle of discarded brass casings on pavement.

Every night I dream of my tomb given over to Him, rolling the boulder shut with the Christ buried within. Would that I had found a way to die in His place.

We have evolved into our present set of cultures and societies. They're all amalgams of our inclinations, our biological imperatives and our intellectual abstractions. . . .

The design is inconsistent: / rooted at one level in the painter's art, / and at another, in the product of my admirable / machine.