The award-winning excerpt as it appeared in The Kenyon Review, Volume XXIV, Number 2, Spring 2002:

You were in Pusan. 

When you flew in, the port was hidden by cloud. You couldn't see the city at all, only the tops of mountains. The man to the right of you, a Korean, said, "Ha! That's smog. Smog! Not so pretty now, huh? Smog! Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Smog!" He went on laughing to himself as he picked up his paper again and read some more. You were still working for that investment bank, were there to find out why a container ship was behind schedule. You had been told it would probably be necessary to make an example of someone, that you should determine who.

And when you landed, it was drizzling, grey.  The whole city was grey.  Built of concrete and iron, built for building.  You couldn't see very far down the streets in that rain that was almost a mist.  Through the haze the odd red or green punched - neons, traffic lights, trashcan fires.  But that was all.  On the way from the airport to the hotel and the next morning from the hotel to the office, you became completely disoriented.  You tried to follow your route on the map your girlfriend had given you but it was useless.  You didn't know where you were.

At the office you spent a day going over the numbers, over the tonnage of materials brought in, over the daily costs of delay, over the percentage of the ship complete.  The day after that you visited the ship itself.  The fog had not cleared and when you stood near the command tower, you could not see the end of that unfinished deck.  About half-way down it dissolved into a skeleton of girders which then itself dissolved into the mist.  As if the mist were acid, as if the mist had halted construction.

And when you took the man off the job he yelled in Korean.  In front of everyone he yelled at you in Korean.  His face turned red, he was stocky, his stomach bulged against his belt, he threw back his shoulders, pointed his finger. 

And you grew furious at him because he did not understand.  This had nothing to do with him.  Did he think he was playing a game here, that some conception of fairness applied?  You picked up a phone to call security but he stormed out of the room.  As you opened your mouth to say something to the others in the room, something about not caring, he opened the door again, yelled one last thing, and was gone.  You remember thinking how puffy he looked as he stuck his torso through that gap, how the arms of his glasses splayed outwards as they ran back to his ears, remember wondering if it was the salty Korean diet that made him that way.  It was only natural.  You hadn't understood a word he had said.

But when you left the building, when you got in that black car that somehow ferried you from the office to the hotel in Haeundae beach, you noticed you were shaking.

And as you shaved before dinner, looked in the mirror, you grew angry at him again, angry at him for making you feel that way, for making you feel ashamed that you did not feel ashamed.  "I mean, what the fuck does he think?" you said, waving your wet razor at your own face, half-hidden in lather, "He can have the benefits without the liability?"  "Screw him," you said.

The local office people took you to a vegetarian restaurant.  "I don't really like vegetarian," you said but the meal was actually quite satisfying.  Everything was fried and you had a lot of Soju.

And when you got back to the hotel, the carpet outside your room was wet. 

You had no way of knowing it was because he had been there.  No way of knowing he had been too ashamed to go home to his wife and so had wandered in the rain for hours before finally sitting outside your door hoping to appeal to you.  No way of knowing he had only just given up, only just decided that what he was doing was ridiculous, only just taken the stairs down as you took the elevator up.  You fumbled with the card lock momentarily.  As you closed the door behind you, the smell of the wet carpet was overpowering.

You are in Pusan.

You sit on the edge of your bed, drunk.  You want to lie down but you can't, you feel sick when you do.  Somehow your eyes find the clock.  It is only 10pm, your girlfriend will just be getting into work.  She is a graphic designer.  You pick up the phone, you call her on the company calling card.

"Hey babe!" she says, happy to hear from you, "So how is it?  How's it going?"

You open your mouth but you don't know what to say.  You think you may want absolution so you tell her what happened today, leaving out the part about the wet carpet, the part you don't know.  But when she gives it to you, tells you you did what you had to do, you realize that wasn't it at all.  You didn't want her to tell you you did the right thing, you didn't care if she thought you did the right thing or not because you already knew you did, you just wanted her to say, "I know what that's like." 

But of course, she can't say that, will never say that.  And if she ever could then you could no longer be with her.  Then you would both be tired.  Then she would be a better friend, but a worse lover.

You haven't been listening to what she's been saying.  You have been thinking.  But as you open your mouth to say, "Listen, do you think I should be doing something else?  Something I enjoyed a little more?" you decipher the sounds she has been making. 

She has been telling you how she finally used that spa certificate you gave her for her birthday, the one you could afford to buy because last year's bonus was so huge it paid off your college debt.  She has been telling you how she went there for the full day and how they pampered her and how they rejuvenated her and how she felt so good afterwards, like a new woman afterwards.

There is a pause.  She says, "Were you about to say something?"

"No," you say, trying to sound surprised.

"Oh," she says, "it sounded like you were about to say something."  And you wonder how that could be because you're certain you didn't make any sound at all.

"Anyway, listen babe," she continues, "I have to go - I have a meeting - but when you get back mommy will make baby feel all better - she pwomises, OK?"

"OK," you say, chuckling.  But you don't feel any better after you hang up.  Just like you didn't need her to tell you you did the right thing, you also didn't need that.  Mommies are for sick little boys.  You aren't sick, you aren't a little boy, you don't need sympathy.  There is nothing tender loving care could do for you right now, right now there is nothing even your real mother could do to make you feel better.  She wouldn't, couldn't, understand what it was like any more than your girlfriend.

The headspin subsiding but not gone, you turn on the TV.  There is a channel that shows only Go, 24 hours a day nothing but Go.  This really is a different place.  You change into a bathrobe, you flip through some channels.  There is a channel that has some kind of beauty contest.  You watch it for a few minutes and realize it's actually a talent competition.  You try to masturbate a little but it's no good, you're not interested, it's not enough.

You turn out the lights.  You get in bed.  But you can't sleep.  The Korean girls in the talent competition keep coming to mind, you can't get the Korean girls in the talent competition out of your head.

Then you remember the card.  After he had told you he was sending you to Pusan, after he had told you it might be necessary to make an example of someone, your boss had looked around, had made sure there were no female employees nearby, and had said, "...and if you get bored, they have the best fucking hookers in all of Korea there."  Then he had taken out one of his business cards and written a name on the back, the name of the concierge at the hotel to ask for, the one who'd "take care of you."  "Come on, Saswat," you'd said, "You know I have a girlfriend!"  "Yeah," he said, "I know," and tucked the card in your breastpocket.

You turn on the light again.  Naked, you find the suit and pull out the card.  You sit on the edge of the bed turning it over and over with your fingertips.  You study the printed name of your boss and the Korean name written on the other side, written with a $1200 pen.  So many things run through your head.  It's not really any different than masturbating, is it?  I wouldn't tell her I jerked off, would I?  At last you decide you'll call down and see how much it costs.  Just out of curiosity.

 And you can't believe how cheap it is.  The high end is less than a first class dinner in Manhattan.  Now you remind yourself you could send her away.  You could just see what she looks like and if you change your mind, you could just send her away.  You'd have to pay her, of course, but so what, you can afford it.  The Korean girls in the talent competition flash through your mind again.  You tell him to send up the best thing they have.  You use that word, "best."

You turn the light off.  You lie on the bed.  You get up and turn another light on, a less intense one, one that you imagine provides a romantic glow.  You put on a robe, take a breath mint.  You look around the room and realize it's a mess.  In a panic because she might arrive any second, you tidy up.  You throw your socks in the closet, make the bed, straighten your papers and laptop on the desk.  You want her to like you, to see that you're not one of those guys, that this is - will be - something special for her.  Something unique.  You don't want her to think you're an animal.

There is a knock at the door, a gentle little rap at the door.

When you open it, it's not what you were expecting at all.  You were expecting a Penthouse Pet, a tall woman, young but not very young, heavily made-up, fake eyelashes, hair thinned from treatments, fit and sexy but with a hard, worn look, with breasts that do not sag but that do hang down enough for there to be a thin line of shadow beneath them  against her ribs, with long, shapely legs that are hard and have good muscle tone but the beginnings of which, from behind, can no longer be said to be clearly distinct, with a taut stomach furrowed by two lines of muscle down its center but that still bulges slightly outwards below the line of her hips, with her skin still tight over her neck and jaw but that seems more pulled that way than pushed and is still somehow loose enough to no longer be able to follow precisely the dips and rises of the tendons in her throat.  In short, someone you would want to fuck.

Instead the girl before you is not very tall nor heavily made-up.  Her breasts are small and natural but still find the strength to resist against the ribbed tube-top she wears.  It doesn't seem like she has ever exercised yet her exposed stomach is completely flat, is lean, is smooth - above it the gentle inverse v of her ribcage disappears into her top leaving a tiny shadow where the material bridges; at its bottom corners, just before it is channeled into her low-slung skirt by her hips, the bones of her pelvis form two small bumps.  The curves of her legs are newly formed, have only recently grown upon the bone, are not yet done growing, have not yet begun to die.  Her black hair is fine and thick and lustrous and healthy.  There is a white band of reflected light across it on one side.  You had forgotten what healthy hair looked like.  Around her large, Eurasian eyes and small mouth, on her brow, you can't see a single wrinkle.  Not one.  Her skin closely follows the line of her jaw and then suddenly angles down where it meets her throat, flows into three cords on either side of her neck, one reaching for her shoulder, one touching the middle of her collarbone, one touching its end, forming the hollow that her larynx grows up out of, back towards her jaw.  And her smell, her smell utterly obliterates that of the still damp carpet.  Her smell is the only smell in the world. 

Her whole body still strives outwards, her lips, her breasts, her thighs, her whole body has not yet decided to stop, to petrify, to crumble.  You have never seen anything so ripe in all your life.  That is the word that comes to mind, "ripe."

You are surprised.  This is not what you expected.  You desire her more than what you expected, certainly, but before the blood begins pounding in your head, you crush your desire down, push it down and away in a little box.  This girl can't be more than sixteen, this girl is illegal.  Illegal, that's what makes you control your desire.  Not "wrong," "illegal."  Your eyes flicker over her collarbone, find yourself thinking how the hollows above it would cup sweat.

But you find yourself saying, "I think there's been a mistake.  Do you understand, 'mistake?'  There's been a 'mistake?'"

"I speak English," she says without an accent, without being able to help rolling her eyes slightly.

"Oh," you say, "Well, I think there's been a mistake - I asked for something else."

She shrugs her shoulders.  "Fine," she says, "They can send up someone else.  No problem."  Without another look at you, she turns and heads off down the corridor.  You watch her go, notice how tiny her ass is, how even through her skirt the dimples on either side of it are visible, how the material seems to be draped over bobbing stone.  As she walks towards the elevator she begins to play some game with the pattern on the rug, stepping on only certain colors, avoiding others, almost toppling herself.

You are shaking.  She is so close to being yours.  This isn't some catholic schoolgirl on a bus, this isn't some girl to look at and think, "Damn, if only that were legal," and shake your head and not give it a second thought because it is illegal and you don't want to take the risk and what would you, could you, do anyway - you are in public.  This is a hooker.  This time, in this case, you only need to say the word and she can be yours.  You could have your hands on her body, your mouth on the back of her neck, on her nipples, your cock inside her as her inner thighs rubbed against your pelvis, as her hands pressed down on your chest, as her upper arms squeezed her firm little breasts together, as she tossed her hair to one side of her head and looked down into your eyes and said with that tiny, pert, little mouth in her accentless English, "That's it.  Fuck me."  You look up and down the hall.  It is empty.  "Wait a minute," you call out.  And without a pause, without a lost step, she turns and walks back to your room and walks through your door without even looking at you.  You find yourself thinking, "This probably isn't even illegal here anyway - the age of consent here is probably 15 or 16 - she could even be 17 or 18."  And you close the door behind you.

You want to devour her.  You can't get enough of her in your mouth - her neck, her arms, her belly.  You could eat her pussy for hours.  With your girlfriend you always did it out of fairness.  She went down on you so you went down on her or you wanted her to go down on you so you went down on her.  You don't mind it - you know some guys who don't like to do it but do it anyway for the same reason you do - no, you don't mind it, but it never turned you on like this.  All you can think about is having her in your mouth.  You make her lie back on the bed, spread her arms out on the bed, and just let you pull her pussy to your mouth.  Beneath your hands, the skin on her thighs is so smooth it makes you think of faxpaper.  You can feel the calluses on your palms scraping it as you hold her legs.  You hear your stubble scratch against her right leg.  Worried you might hurt her, you push her legs further open.  The tendons on her inner thighs flex out like little steel cables and where they end, where they push out the furthest forming little cups of skin above and below, the mound of her pussy drops down towards her ass.  She has shaved herself completely bare, you hope that's what she's done, and the slit between her legs is so delicate it looks like someone has cut her with a scalpel.  Carefully, gently, you pull the slit open with your fingertips revealing the folds of tan flesh inside.  You never noticed how clumsy your fingers were before, how enormous, how ugly.  Like a gorilla's, you find yourself thinking.  You look at her spread open like that for a second, like a sea-creature, like an anemone in that moment it reaches out to swallow a fish, and then you glance up her body.  She isn't moving, she stares at the ceiling, you can't see her face.  Then you put your mouth on her.  For a second you are relieved to feel the odd piece of stubble pricking your lips.  For a second you wonder if your girlfriend would shave herself like this.  And then you are lost.

Suddenly she taps you on the shoulder, taps you on the shoulder as if you were in a line for a bus and she needed information.  You look up at her, one of your ape fingers still inside her.  And she says, "If you want to fuck me you should do it now - you only have fifteen minutes left."  You can't believe it.  You can't believe you have been doing what you have been doing for forty-five minutes.  You feel like you have only just begun.  And you find yourself wondering how she has been keeping track of time.

You don't really want to stop what you've been doing but you feel that you should, that you didn't pay to make her feel good, that you should get what you actually paid for.  You only have to make a slight motion towards flipping her over and she is immediately on her hands and knees, thrusting her shoulder blades and her ass in the air, keeping her belly low.  As you go to put yourself inside her from behind, you follow the curved groove of her sunken spine with your eyes down to the small of her back where it ends in a tiny, flat v of skin rising up like an arrowhead, its sides carved out by the two hemi-spheres that began sloping up at her hips, its point the beginning of the cleft of her ass - small, round, taut as a balloon - and again you are overcome by the urge to put her in your mouth.  Without realizing what you are doing you find yourself licking her asshole.  Tomorrow, on the plane, as you think back over the experience, as you try to reconstruct every detail, you will suddenly remember your body did this, and you will wonder where you were when it happened.  There and then, on the plane, as the stewardess asks you if you want beef or chicken, the thought of it will make you ill.  But here and now, in your hotel room, this thing you would never do makes you want to cum.  You push yourself inside her, grab her waist with your hands, your hands that almost encompass her waist in their grip, and thrust in and out of her.  The tip of your cock pushes against the roof of her uterus and everytime it does she lets out a little squeal.  You can't tell if it's from pain or pleasure but you think it's probably both.  You worry a little bit about breaking her, about crushing her ribcage as you squeeze her little breasts that feel as firm as oranges, about snapping her arm as you pull her back onto you, about suffocating her when - after just five or six strokes - you cum and collapse on top of her.

But she is fine.  She lets you lie on top of her for a second, carefully pulls you out of her making sure the condom stays in place, wipes her hand on the sheets, and squirms out from under you.  You can not move.  You watch her dress.  She disappears into the bathroom for a minute to fix her hair and make-up but it doesn't take long and when she is done, when you still haven't moved, she says, "I have to go." 

You pull yourself up from the bed, out from under the enormous weight crushing you to the bed, and, in a daze, give her her cash.  It's less than a quarter of what you had in your wallet for just one day's expenses.

She takes it without ceremony and puts it in her purse.  You are still naked.  At the door, after she's opened it a crack, she turns and says, "I'm sorry I reminded you about time - they always do what you did and forget about time and then get mad when they find out time is gone."

"Oh don't worry about it!" you say congenially, you say wanting her to know you're not the same as the other men, that you'd never get mad.  She just nods and says, "If you want me again, ask for Jin," and is gone.

 When you get back in bed you wish you felt worse about this.  You wish you felt terrible, in fact.  But you don't.  Instead you feel fucking fantastic.  Reborn.  You head is clear, you can actually feel the sheets touching your entire body.

As you drift off to sleep you realize the concierge hadn't misunderstood, hadn't made a mistake, at all.  This must have been what Saswat was talking about.  The best fucking hookers.  The two older men simply knew what you needed better than you knew yourself.

The next day you buy your girlfriend a gift before you leave, an antique necklace.  You were going to get her something anyway, you just spend a little more than you had originally planned.

You were in Pusan.

The example worked.  The ship was finished on time.  You saved $25 million dollars.  You were a hero.  The ship's cartel took you and your boss out to a restaurant that overlooked the entire city.  At one point, as they served the nine dozen littleneck oysters, Saswat leaned over and said quietly in your ear, "Welcome to the club."  You had been thinking about the man you fired, about whether he would ever eat in a restaurant like this, drink wine like this wine, but when Saswat said that, you stopped feeling guilty, alone.  You at last felt like you had a companion, someone who understood.

It was a clear night.  Afterwards they took you to a loud stripclub, sent you to the Champagne Room with a girl named something-andy.  The next morning you had a vague memory of her blowing you there, but you couldn't be certain, you were very drunk.  And as you lay there that Saturday morning, your girlfriend's arm draped over your chest, the sunlight diffused over both of you by the curtains, as you lay there you thought about the last time you were that drunk, about Jin standing there outside your door, about how she looked standing there outside your door, about how she smelled standing there outside your door, how there was no other smell there, no other smell at all.

I remember holding your hand in Avignon. 

We walked through the medieval streets, close like canyons, twisting our ankles on the cobblestones.  The sun was orange, yellow, made everything beautiful, the laundry strung from window to window, the stray dogs pissing in the gutters.

We had always talked about going there when we were in college.  You had done your thesis on the Papal period, wanted to see all the places that were so important, the places that had only been words and silver halides to you.  This was a dream come true for you.

At that palace like a fortress, like some vampire's hall, you told me what happened here, who was killed there.  On the walls, from where we could see the collapsed bridge, you sang the song.  Your French was perfect.  A little English girl was there and when she heard you singing, she ran away from her mother and asked you if you could teach her the song.  You held her tiny hands while you listened to her, took her request as seriously as she did, laughed and looked at me when she was done asking.  The wind blew your hair into your face but I think you saw me smile.  You taught her the song and her mother thanked you as if you had done her the greatest favor, endured the greatest injustice.

We stayed in a suite at the Louis XIV.  The night we arrived there was champagne waiting for us in the room.  I had asked for it.  The night we arrived you tried to pour it down your naked breast into my open mouth, but instead of cascading off your nipple, the stream split there, clung to the underside of your breast, ran down your body to where it touched the bed.  I licked up what I could as it flowed but it made the mattress wet anyway.

I bought you everything you wanted.  Everything.  The crusader's cross hammered out in silver, inlayed with onyx.  The regency armoire that cost as much to ship back as to buy.  A letter of excommunication signed by Pope Innocent VI. 

But you said you didn't want the bracelet.  You looked at it very closely but then stood upright and said, "No, I don't really want it."  You didn't know I saw you touch the glass bangle you were wearing as you spoke, the bangle I had brought you back from a business trip to London.  You probably didn't know you touched it yourself.

You seemed so happy.  I enjoyed your company so much.  I wasn't particularly interested in the medieval history of the Papacy but it made you so excited, made you come so much alive, that I could listen to you talk about it for hours.  Your eyes lit up when you talked about it, shone, not like when you talked about your work at the PR firm.  I remembered why I'd taken you so far to ask you a question I already knew the answer to.

The last night there, after dinner, near a lead fountain in the middle of a crossroads, I asked you to marry me.  You said yes, of course.  And that was what was supposed to happen.  There was nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all.  I felt fine.

On the flight back you looked at the ring every so often, hoped the woman next to you would say how pretty it was, ask you about it.  But she was much older, she read and she ate and she said nothing.  At last, somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic ocean, you put your arms around my neck and sighed and closed your eyes and said, "It's like a fairy tale."  I kissed your brow and moved your left arm a little so I could see the report I was trying to read.

But I do remember holding your hand in Avignon.

And maybe, just maybe, that night after the girl had left but before you fell asleep, you had an epiphany that this was not an epiphany.  That this had nothing to do with Pusan, or the business card with the pimp's name, or the mist, or any of that crap.  Maybe you realized that somewhere along the way you had begun to feel like this but you couldn't have said precisely where or when or how.  Maybe this is, in fact, much more likely.

Perhaps you too will see her again.  Perhaps on an icefield before a medieval stone church.  Perhaps crossing a small piazza, empty but for you and her and a street vendor selling wet slices of coconut.  Perhaps on a crowded subway, the stench of sweat and french fries and metal forcing you both to breathe through your mouths, to pant like animals.  But not as you once did.

And it will be her that will recognize you, not you her.  She will say your name with hesitation and a question mark.  And you will continue to look at her dumbly for one more instant as you have been for minutes and then think, "No, it can't be!"  Yet you will say her name with pleasure.  But not as you once did.

"My god," she'll say, "you've hardly changed!"

"And you look terrific too," you'll say.  But that's not what you'll be thinking.  You'll be thinking how you never would have recognized her. 

She doesn't look bad, she's only - what? - in her thirties after all.  For her age, in fact, she looks excellent.  If there are other men you will notice then how they are staring at her.  If you are on a beach you will wonder then how, if the information was correct, after three children, she still manages to wear a bikini convincingly.

And yet you still never would have recognized her.

"Is that Chanel you're wearing?" you will find yourself saying eventually, unable to stop, "I thought you hated Chanel - you always used to say it was...what was it?" and here you will find yourself pausing, then, as you actually say the word, smiling, openly mocking, the way you felt but never would have revealed when she used that same word so freely, so seriously, so long ago, "Bourgeois?"

"I don't know," she'll say, shrugging, "I like it now."  And she will be embarrassed that you mentioned how she used to use that word.  How she used to believe it meant something.  Embarrassed.  Even she recognizes she is not the same.  But she believes it is because of something she has gained, not something she has lost.

We smile when they tell us we don't know anything and that we understand even less.

Smile when they berate us for being boring, for wanting nothing more than to sit still when we have a moment in which we do not need to work, despite the money and the toys we have, the money and the toys we always dreamed of.  "We could do anything," they say, "fly to China for the weekend, race cars, anything, and all you want to do is sit there and watch the largest television I've ever seen."  Yes that is all we want but not all we wanted.  The energy is gone for all else, gone, and they should be thankful for that because that is why we need them, that is why they make us tremble, that is why we smile at them and say nothing, because they are our energy now, they have the energy we have spent elsewhere, we need them to get us up off the couch because without them, a moment's peace would be enough.

Smile, find it charming when they're impressed by what used to impress us - champagne, private jets, expensive cigarettes - again, we need them for that.  Without them we have done all this for nothing.

You have been walking the crowded streets of Cairo, eating a handful of dates one at a time, looking for quality rugs.  You have been riding horses in the Andes and come into a village for a lunch of fried guinea pig, papas fritas, and Fanta.  At dawn, a sherpa has been slowly driving you out of town in an open jeep to head up to the monastery in the mountains.  You have left a meeting in Tokyo and been stepping into your limousine.

In all these places a pair of teenage girls has walked past wearing less than they should be.  In all of these places you have turned your head to follow them.  In all of these places you have looked up from them and met the eyes of another man.  And in all of these places you have smiled at each other with absolute understanding.  In all of these places it has been this that you could share with other men.

You might have had a dog once.  You might have liked him a lot.  And he probably liked you even more.  You might have played with him every day.  You might have taught him all kinds of commands.  He might have made you smile whenever you came home no matter how shitty your life was.  He really might have been willing to die for you without hesitation. 

But sometimes when you fed him, you couldn't help thinking that maybe this was what your whole relationship was based on.  That if somehow he decided where and when and what you ate, you would be the one sleeping on the floor, the one balancing the bone on your nose until he said, "OK," the one sitting up on your haunches when he said, "Beg." 

If you had a dog once, sometimes this was something you couldn't help thinking.

Love, lust, passion, longing, a sight for sore eyes, tempted by, weakness for, ache for, pant for, hurt for, languish for, cry for, itch for, wild for, yearning, craving, thirsting, coveting, hungry for, voracious, rapacious, unquenchable, insatiable, stuck on, gone on, need, want, set on, driven mad by, intoxicated, in your blood, besotted, befuddled, drunk, buzzed, bombed, high, stoned, hopped-up, coked-out, fucked, hooked, habit.

It is possible to determine how important a thing is to a society by the number of words that society has for it.  The number of subtle distinctions show how much time they have spent thinking about it, how familiar they are with it, how important a part it plays in their lives.  Thus, the Eskimo have twenty-two words for snow; the Bedouin, thirty-one words for sand. 

From these kinds of examples the argument is also derived that to understand a culture, one must first understand its language.

And it is also these kinds of examples that make some cognitive scientists and linguists believe that language is the most useful tool we have for understanding the brain's higher functions.  The brain receives information about the world through the senses and then organizes that information.  And because language is entirely an abstract creation of the brain designed to help convey that organization, the idea is that if we can understand how language is designed, we can then understand how the brain functions by a kind of reverse engineering.  The idea is that words expose us.

You remember your first report card from high school.  Your home room teacher had written under the general comments section, "Less Romeo, more study."  Your mother and father told you to listen to what she said, that it was good advice.  So you began to study more, you began to do well.  And your parents were proud of you and told you so and told all their friends how smart you were, how well you were doing in school. 

But that first report card was the only one your father ever actually took out to show his friends.

You wake in the night sometimes, your heart pounding with that fear, that terror that you are not secure, that you are exposed, that for all your money and servants and employees, tomorrow you may be out on the street - working in a factory, driving a bus - fighting with a woman as old as you are about whether or not you can afford to see a movie.  Just a lousy movie.  You lie there and stare at where the ceiling would be in the dark and you realize that there is someone next to you.  But you don't know who.  You weren't even that drunk.  There were, as always, several candidates - temps, struggling actresses, younger sisters.  They couldn't wait to talk to you, to listen to you, to find you fascinating.  And now one of them lies next to you.  Half your age, you know that, she must be.  But that is all you know.  Her face, her name, her body are gone. 

And you hate yourself for being weak, for taking the drug again, for smoking the cigarette you had forborne.  You wish she wasn't there, whoever she is. 

In the morning, you wake and she is in your shower.  You wonder what she looks like but it doesn't matter, no matter what she looks like she must go.  But then the shower is turned off and she steps into your room, drying her whole body with a handtowel, unashamed of her nakedness.  Not like the women you know your own age, that can't wait to hide their sagging flesh, turn off lights, wear long skirts.  And her wet hair and the glistening of her nipples in the morning sun and her anklet or her tattoo or her pierced tongue or whatever it is makes you shiver and you know you will not tell her to leave, that you will listen to her babble over lunch and nod and smile.  But not because you are trying to please her.  Because watching her really does make you smile, indulging her really does make you happy for a moment.  Watching something free, unweighted, like a setting a dog loose on a beach.  You are too tired to run like that, too anxious to enjoy the sun and the waves, but seeing the animal relax, take pleasure, at least helps you remember what it was like.  In the earning of things you have lost the ability to enjoy them.  And others can only enjoy them because they did not earn them.

Because in ancient Athens, to get to Plato's academy you had to walk through the public cemetery for those killed in war.

You will let her dress you, let her teach you new dances, take you to new clubs, new bars, because even though you know it does not really matter, it matters to her.  You will let her take you to a dirty Thai restaurant that has mediocre food and when she says "How is it?" you will say "Great," and she'll say, "I told you!" and you'll leave it at that because you can't explain and you'd rather she was happy and ignorant than informed and miserable.  In fact it is because of this very quality that you are drawn to her and those like her and why you can never be with one too long.  Because then they become like you, when they become informed, they become tired like you, jaded.  But when they still do not yet understand the world, they can still remind you of joy.  They are little bundles of joy, they are.  You can live your life through them even though you are dead.  These little bundles of joy in string bikinis who are not too tired to go parasailing, still thrilled at the prospect of sky-diving, who have not yet discovered that there is nothing worth discovering.  You want to possess them, yes.  But like a spirit, not an owner.

"And even Idas,the strongest man of all men at that time, drew his bow against the King, Apollo, for the sake of Marpessa, the girl with the sweet step..." - The Iliad, 9:558

You never discuss your business with them, never talk about the thing that occupies most of your thoughts and time, not just because they won't understand, not just because they will find it boring, not just because, in their naiveté, they will criticize you for your practices, for winning, for generating the wealth they are enjoying at that very moment, but because it will pollute them, make them dirty, just as it did with that first one, that one that you kept around the longest, that one you mistook for love.

I don't remember when exactly but it must have been soon after we'd met, you taught me that if you fold a dollar bill lengthwise and then flatten it out again, a vending machine will almost always accept it. 

Goddamn you for that.  There are so many people I have forgotten, people I liked much more than you, people that I never even knew I knew until someone else mentions them and I wonder what happened to them because I liked them.  But not you.  You I must now remember in every airport, in every gymnasium, in every stairwell.  Thanks to your little trick, I can never forget you.  Goddamn you for that.

All over the world, we see dead people.  Everywhere we go, we visit graves and cemeteries and cities of the dead, we take excursions to tombs or pyramids or burial mounds or stupas, we make a point of seeing at least one monument, one cenotaph, one cromlech, one battlefield before we take our leave.  Even on vacation we not only can't get away from death, we seek it out.  Even on vacation, there are epitaphs everywhere we look.

You will be standing on the shoreline of a river where you played as a child, drank as a teenager.  You will stand there with your daughter and stare out over the water, over at the other side.  She will insist on lipstick and on earrings but will still hold your hand when it's cold, sometimes even when it isn't. 

"Daaaad," she will whine, "what're we doing here?  It's cold."

"I don't understand," you will say, "there used to be a factory over there across the river.  A run-down abandoned factory.  You could look at it for hours.  It had all kinds of machines running into it and coming out of it. No one ever knew what it did - but that was why it used to be so fascinating.  This used to be a really cool spot to just hang out."

"Dad," she will say with a withering look, a look you will not catch as you look out over the water at the new yacht club on the other side, "Dad, nobody says 'hang out' anymore...and nobody cares about how things used to be."