Broken glittering glass edges reflecting an elegant universe magnified the tears of an Iraqi girl burying her parents in a white shroud of cloth, an old flag of final surrender.
Tree leaves blasted green to deep yellow and brown. They flew into a river. They gathered on boulders clogging the Rio Guadalete and dolomite waterfalls. One leaf could do a lot of damage. The river needed cleaning.
"See," said the Grand Inquisitor ringing his broken Spanish bell, "it’s all possible. Everything is permitted if there is no God."
"Let’s invent a God," said a pregnant nun supporting her nose habit. "We need reason and faith to believe in a higher power."
"Reason and faith are incompatible," said a logic board filled with circular flux reactors.
"Look," said Little Nino, "I found a compass and it works. The needle is pointing to magnetic north. This may help us. I am a compass without a needle."
Ahmed the Berber read the instructions. "Great Scott! It says one sharp line of description is better than any number of mundane observations."
"You don’t need a compass in the land of dreams," said a mother. "We need all the direction we can handle."
"Maybe one direction is enough," said a cartographer.
"If you need a helping hand," said a child, "look at the end of your wrist."
"O wise one, tell us another," cried a disembodied voice.
"Ok, how about this," a child said. "Our days of instant gratification are a thing of the past."
"Looks like everything is a thing of the past," observed a child sifting dust particles at Ground Earth on 9/11.
"You’re wiser than your years."
"That’s an old saw with a rusty blade cutting through desire, anger, greed, ignorance and suffering."
"Yes," said a child, "there are two kinds of suffering."
"What are they?" asked another orphan.
"There’s suffering you run away from and suffering you face,” said a child arranging leaves on blank pages inside her black book.
A Century is Nothing
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