The Story He Just Told to His Imaginary Pet

Determined to pursue the Russian army

all the way to Moscow, Napoleon fought the flu.

In the biting wind and rain he faced his future

with a fever. Levering his Enemy into the best

position to be killed, he steeled himself to disbelieve

his own mortality - enrobing in puissance-de-Dieu -

he exercised ague- and world-defying godly

autocratic will. When I'm equivalently ill. I'm drawn

to grand denial and hyperbole no less than he.

My capacity for a selective take on what the tapestry

reveals is thoroughly unbounded. I have a taste

for the unfounded. I think the paradox of being

human must contain these two perplexities:

the felt necessity of bald self-revelation and

the urgency of clinging to the lie. Amounts to this:

Plan never to know anything. Expect to die.

.