I’ve acquired a taste for meeting dragons–often quite suddenly–because I’ve learned, slowly and after long, torturous detours, that, first, dragons are a sure sign of treasure–some truth that’s new to me is close at hand–and, second, dragons are mainly bluff. They have no real power–except the power of illusion and dread.
The garden is not decadent, of course. It is merely decaying. But being amid it, one can sense the temptation to decadence–that recurring human response to loss of faith–a way of taking the decay not as a transitory phase but instead as a choice and a meaning.
An awareness of nothing has creeped into our schools and offices. What does it matter which building in which edge city reached by which highway one goes to through morning gridlock to ride the same elevator to the same hallway to the same room filled with purplish gray fabric-covered cubicles, personalized with photocopied jokes?
Then the story begins–-the knight,
the dragon, the princess–-a cruel struggle,
