"A good example is the best sermon." - Thomas Fuller

 

October 16th, 1995

I sit here blind, to remind myself that I am not alone. As I sit here staring boolean algebra through series of logic gates I know that beside me sits a ghost, doing its own homework. We are connected by invisible cords of strangeness that are so as long as we never meet.

If something is true so that it may be true, then my situation is in longing for the falseness of this statement so that I can find another better reality. I want it to be false so I can see the color of its hair and touch the softness of its face. But I do not know the equations to simplify this impossible situation; and my teacher scrapes a more difficult algorithm on the black board.

October 13th, 1995

There is no water here. We must move on.

The cattle have died: the horses, the stear and cows, even our dogs have been taken away by the hot sun. The children ask where they have gone. Only memories remain.

One of the men says there is an old water hole a week's trek away. We keep it to ourselves. It was not the first time our pack was heart broken by appearance of a dry lake or river bed. I kept a fish skeleton in my pack, a reminder of our difficulty days ahead. If I should die, let it be in the bottom of a worn river bed.

Today one of my children left. She was the youngest. There was nothing we could do. I took some roots and squeezed the waning juices into her mouth, but she could not swallow. Her throat was like fire and burned throughout her thin body. If I could, I would have given my own saliva, but even my mouth tasted of sandy desert. She was burried beneath the branches of a dead tree which would no doubt fall over when the storms came.

Deep inside I wished we could all sit in one place and go to where our fathers had gone. It would be easier that way. But the scorch is a physical reminder that things are not as they were. This is how a body hopes. It doesn't know that else it should do.