smooth

GRAVEL

2.  People do a lot to get along with other people. Too much. They worship a crucified Jew and call themselves good; next they'll worship a lynched American slave up on some altar and call themselves angelic. I know what a cross is. It marks a spot in the center of your chest where you can descend inside yourself and come up through your peripheral vision, and if the feeling you're remembering is intense enough, up into the direct perception of outside physical reality. An eyeball on the sidewalk. You see the smooth gravel in the traffic island. You see yourself common as grass and dirt. I was at the airport some six months later and saw an angry hombre on the escalator going up while I was going down. He was staring at me. I thought, "These are the fucking phonies we're dealing with!" and two days later, replaced that thought with —Hang tough. I'm trying to purify my soul.