Editing Malady (section)

==Rebirth==
The true thrust of this story is beginning to take shape now, and
I'm very glad that it is. This is for several reasons - first, I was scared
for a time that I was writing into nothingness, and that Aristotle and I
would go nowhere at all. Second, I think I'm starting to go insane,
cooped up all day and all night in this house in Vedado, Habana. I have
begun to shout things - 'elephant trunk,' or 'cock swain,' at no one and
at nothing, but just to shatter the monotonous silence, and then to let
it build again. I am beginning to think that I need to finish this thing
and get the hell out of Cuba. I need a change.


Aristotle needed a change. He needed the change, certainly, but
before he could even contemplate setting out on the path that
unfolded beneath his feet, Aristotle needed to insure that he could
walk that path, all the way to the end. Except for the seed of chaos
that lay dormant in his chest, except for that universal pulse in his soul,
Aristotle was just a normal man. He was extremely successful in his
field, and he was very well liked, but he fell squarely in the range of the
ordinary. That was going to have to change. Ari knew that was going to
have to change. If he wanted to cure the malady, Aristotle was going to
have to become someone, almost something, extraordinary. All the
great figures had known it at some point - that it was time for their
transformation, the moment of their rebirth. All the great figures had
known it, and now Aristotle knew it, and he set to work.


One could probably make the argument that there's something
chauvinistic about what Aristotle did next. But chauvinism is not a
feature of great figures, and it was not a feature of Aristotle. It
bordered on chauvinism, but really it was just love. In the seven years
since they had last seen each other, Ari had never gotten over Lucy. He
had taken many lovers, it's true, both paid and unpaid, but he had
never forgotten the way that Lucy met his gaze that night. He had
never forgiven himself for the despondent wreck which had driven her
away. If Aristotle was going to fight the battle that was coming his way,
he would need to be strong. If he was going to be strong, he had to
make up for the weakness he had shown her so long ago. If Aristotle
was going to be great, he needed Lucy - to give him strength, to
demonstrate greatness. Aristotle was certain - he had to get her back.
He devised a plan, though not a very good one. He would send her an
email - the first since his apologia upon return from the dusty dark. He
would send her an email, and he would ask where she was living, and
then he would go. He didn't know what he would do when he got
there, and he didn't know why he felt so strongly that this would work,
but that was his plan, and it could not fail.


He sent the email on a Wednesday afternoon. It was simple and
delicate. He wanted to know where she was, and how she had been. He
sent the email, and he waited. All that day he did nothing but wait for
Lucy's reply. The phone rang - he stared at his screen. The office
buzzed around him - he stared at his screen. The reply did not come.
At eight o'clock he left the office, went straight home, and checked
again. The reply did not come. All this fervor, for the cause and the
cure, was tied up completely in his plan to regain Lucy's love. Days
dragged on - her reply did not come. Days became weeks - her reply
did not come. Aristotle was ready to forget about the whole damn
thing. If Lucy would not reply to his message, then he would let the
sickness overcome us all. Someone else could do it, then, someone
whose former lovers responded to their e-mails. But then, Lucy did
respond. She responded. Lucy responded. Lucy, that lost love,
possessed of the same smoldering gaze, who loved words and worlds
and the winged flight of desire, responded to Aristotle's call. She was in
Paris. She had been well.


Now Aristotle lost no time. Before the day was out he had boarded
a plane. Before the day had begun he was marching toward Paris, the
flag of love and selfless resistance borne invisibly above his noble head.
He would find her, and he would tell her, and she would see. Lucy
always saw. She was the only one. Aristotle marched on, and in the
morning light he saw the narrow streets open wide to lead him
through. He called information, and he got an address in Saint
Germain. He could picture her there, amongst the sculptors and song
writers, and the spinners of tales. He only hoped that she had not
fallen for one, some french romantic with at least as fiery eyes. He only
hoped that his plan, as simple and as under-thought as it was, would be
enough.


He stepped out of the car and onto the street in front of Lucy's
building. He did not hold flowers. He only held himself, proud, bearing
that flag of fearless love. He rang. There was no reply, so for hours he
sat there, and let the motion of the planet undulate his insides. It so
clearly wanted to. He sat there, and he waited, and the sun arced across
the sky. The sun dipped. The sky grew warm.


Lucy turned the corner, and Aristotle saw her silhouette against the
painted air of twilight. He stood. He could see her clearly now, in a
black dress, with jets of straight black hair reaching infinitely down her
back. It was her collarbones that caught him off guard. They were so
regal, so proud - her jutting, jetting collarbones, standing guard above
her heart. She walked with the same ferocity he remembered, and he
imagined walking beside her, taking her hand and walking just as
proud. She was close enough now that he could hear her humming as
she went. She looked happy.


"Aristotle!?" Lucy had seen him before he realized that she had
walked all the way down the block. For a half a moment he could not
speak. Then in his voice, a voice that belonged only to him, he said:


"Hello Lucy." His plan was done. He had only been able to think this
far, and the next moment was beyond him.


"How long have you been here?"


"Since this morning."


"I sent you a message yesterday. How did you... What are you..." But
then lucy calmed, and in her voice, a voice that belonged only to her,
she continued:


"Well, come in, come in."


They walked up the stairs to Lucy's apartment, and Aristotle
answered her questions. He was glad he didn't have to think of
something to say. When they walked inside, Ari was sure that she lived
alone. It was all Lucy - the irises in tiny vases and the simple lines. He
remembered how much he had gotten from her. No, there was no
trace of another in that apartment. It was all Lucy. It was beautiful,
and Aristotle was filled with a wish that he had been there to build it
with her. Even if they could be together again, Aristotle knew he would
always regret the seven years they had just spent apart.


But then, there was no room for regret, because the past brings us
to the present, and Lucy was standing just before him. When Aristotle
was seated on one of the couches, Lucy finally asked the question that
he had been waiting for, that they both had known was coming.
"So what are you doing here?"
Ari looked into Lucy's eyes. That moment between question and
answer seemed to drag on forever. She was still the only woman that
had ever really met his gaze. In that moment it was all very clear. Lucy
knew why Ari was there, and Ari knew what her answer would be.
"I'm still in love with you, Lucy."


There was a thickness to the pause after those words were spoken.
So much of everything was resting on what came next. Ari had not
expected to come out with it so soon, but he had, and he was glad that
he had, whether it worked out or not. Aristotle closed his eyes, almost
as if he was expecting a blow to the ribs. Then he felt it. It was soft. At
first he thought it was in his head, and so he opened his eyes. No -
Lucy's hand was really on his hand. It was Lucy's hand. It was his hand.
They were touching.
"Ari, you want to go for a walk?"


The plan had worked. It had actually worked. Against all odds, and
despite the absolutely ludicrous nature of it all. Aristotle was here in
Paris, and Lucy's hand was touching his. There she was. Lucy - just her
name was enough.
"I mean, you came all this way, and it just sort of feels right. You're you.
You're my honeybee. I don't think I could have stopped loving you,
even if I'd wanted to."


All that night, they walked through the city. They spent those first
twelves hours overcoming the distance of the previous seven years.
When the light came, they knew it was right, though Ari had known it
all along. But they knew it now, together. Dawn was breaking and
Aristotle knelt. This had not been a part of the plan. His body had
done it almost involuntarily. Lucy said she had been about to do the
same. Aristotle would move to Paris. His former life in Arizona didn't
matter any more. This was a new life, this was a glorious rebirth. He
would maintain Halcyon from afar, and he would move to Paris to be
with Lucy. His only real reservation was Iggy, but he knew that when
the time came, Iggy would be again by his side. Life could be strange,
with its brambling byways and its thickets of despair, but if anything
was obvious or right, it was this. At first Ari wondered what had taken
him so long. Then it all became quite clear - he had had to become the
man he was becoming. He had had to start alone down this long and
circuitous path. It could not have been another way. Lucy would say
later that it was his new intensity that had pulled her in. When she had
seen him on the street it had been unthinkable, but she knew by the
time they climbed those steps to her apartment. He hadn't uttered a
word about the malady before he proposed, but Lucy said that he
hadn't had to. A thing like that is beyond words.


Aristotle never went back. He called Iggy, who he had not told
about his plan, and he asked if he could help him sell the house. He
was surprised at first, and sad that his baby brother would be so far
away. Soon, though, the joy crept in. He knew what this meant for Ari.
He knew that he had become quite young again, possessed of all the
strength and vigor of youth. He knew this meant that Aristotle was
serious about the remedy, and he said he would help, whenever and
wherever he was needed. Truly, the rebirth had begun. But it had only
begun, and Aristotle knew that there was a tremendous transformation
afoot.


It was dawning slowly on Ari that what he was contemplating was
akin to, if not simply the same as revolution. He knew that he would
have to prepare. So with Lucy by his side, he set about a course of
study. He would read anything would tell him even the slightest bit
about how to rearrange an organism like humanity. He would read
about non-violence and the art of war, speechwriting and rhetoric, and
populist thought. He wanted to know about cars and airplanes and
satellites and ships, about cities and highways and progressive reform.
Ferociously, he studied. He read about Jesus and Ghandi and Malcom
X, about Castro and Lenin, and Washington and Lee. Rebellions,
uprisings, overthrows and usurpations, he devoured them all. Lucy had
always inspired a curiosity in him. Back when they had been students
together, it had almost been for her that he learned. She was his
greatest teacher and his greatest interlocutor, and she loved him for
the intelligence and wonder he displayed. She translated great works
for him, and when he was not reading, she gave him lessons in German
and Hindi and Mandarin and French.


Aristotle read and he read and he read - in the dim light of bistros
and the bright midday sun. He read books about contagions and
construction and chaos. He studied math and physics and chemistry
and the stars, and more than studying, he understood. A biting urgency
drove him, and at times he scared even himself with the ferocity of his
thirst. Yes, that is the best way to describe it, hackneyed as it may be.
It was a tremendous thirst which had overcome our hero, and there
was not enough water in the world. Not enough water in the dazzling
vast oceans, which stretch beyond the imagination, and out into the
realm of the unknowable.


Ari was deeply methodical in his mad drenching of the mind. As he
had grown accustomed to, he kept a journal - thick and large and
bound in a soft black leather. In it he wrote the names of the books he
read, and copious notes of the most salient points. He copied diagrams
and maps. He annotated annotations, and filled volume after volume.
He would not stop. He would not stop until he had written an
encyclopedic summary of all the knowledge necessary to deliver the
remedy. You would have thought him either a madman or a genius if
you had seen him in those days, wandering the streets of Paris, always
with a book in one hand and a journal in the other, a fine point pen
clenched between his teeth. And then he was, both genius and
madman, convinced of a contamination that most simply saw as the
necessary order of things. They say the only difference between the
two is that the genius is right. Now, that's up for you to decide for
yourself, and it's not such an easy question. Even when it's all said and
done, I don't think that an answer comes easy.


So for two years, Aristotle did nothing but read. He lived easily off
of only a fraction of his stake in Halcyon. It had grown so large by then
- much larger than I've let on. From time to time, Danny would call
him, and ask him to speak to the machines in a way that no one else
could. The office called only when in absolute need, and always
Aristotle found a fix.


So for two years he studied, and for two years he came home to
Lucy's apartment in Saint Germain. It was their apartment now, really,
filled with both of their books. It was an easy love between them,
something that should have been there all along, was there all along,
only stifled by a misstep of youth. Only nothing is a misstep, for it had
all led them there. Their lives were full of purpose and joy and love,
and the seriousness of a pair plotting madness. Lucy was in on it now.
She had read the pathology soon after Aristotle came to her, and for
two years she had been fixing it, improving it, amending it, and putting
it into the many languages that she knew.


Aristotle had filled fourteen of those black notebooks in the years
since he came to Paris. He kept them by the bed. Sometimes, he would
wake in the eerie silence of the early morning, and rush to one of
them. He was scared he would forget. But he did not forget. There's no
telling how much knowledge can be crammed into the mess of neurons
inside a human head - Ari wanted to find out.


But all the time, Ari saw that the malady was worsening. He saw his
task as a race against time. He could never be sure when the disease
would become incurable, having spread too far to be uprooted by a
pulse. He never knew when the bombs would fall. Nobody did in those
days.


So it was that Aristotle decided he was done. It wasn't that he had
read it all, or that he had filled his head to the brim, but only that they
were in a race against time. There was so little time, it seemed, and so
much to do before it all began. The rebirth still was not complete.
Aristotle knew that he was not ready. It wasn't for lack of knowledge,
though, that he felt unprepared. It was when he looked in the mirror.
Even with Lucy back beside him, he did not feel that inner fortitude
that he was sure he would have to possess. As Rilke said, he wanted his
will. He wanted to be with his will as it moved towards deed.


After filling fourteen notebooks with the stuff of fact, Aristotle
began a fifteenth of something entirely different. It was a lengthy letter
to himself. Every day he wrote, and convinced himself little by little
that he had in him the stuff of great pulsation. Every day he reminded
himself that someone, at some point, had to take the leap out of the
vessel of their human self, and embrace the free-fall of the more-than-
man - the hero, the savior, the son, the sun, the titan, the olympian,
the first, the humanity. Every day he found new courage, and penned
to himself an epic work of uplift. But it wasn't enough to say inside and
tell himself that fate had fallen squarely on his strong, broad shoulders.
He needed more than that.


He went into the streets and he walked the streets. He spoke to the
people, and he asked about their health, the health of their souls, and
how the malady had made their life a less than glorious thing. He
looked and he saw suffering, he asked and he was told of pain. He
wondered what humanity had become.


Still, it was not enough. A doctor doesn't treat cancer because
cancer is bad, they do so because life is good. Aristotle searched for the
good, and he found it in droves. He saw the untainted impulse of birds
in flight, and flowers in bloom - children wailing to mothers full of
love. He saw the beauty of it all, and each morning when dawn broke,
he praised mightily the soul of the sun. The complexity of it all
bewildered him, and he was conscious of the small part that we all play
in an organism much grader than the sum of civilization. He saw wild
surf breaking onto soft white shores. He marveled at the strength of
sand - to take a beating like that, and after many millennia only sit
there, and invite the next wave to release its burden. He saw the sky
turn colors, and he was not sure if they were mournful tones, or so very
full of hope. He peered upward at night, through lenses and mirrors in
the darkest field, and asked, grasped, at the role we have to play, at the
role he had to play.


He filled page after page - filled them with a cogent call for action
beyond words. He could feel a resolve welling up inside him, and he
knew the time would come. Lucy knew it, too, and at times she would
aid Aristotle in his search for fortitude by penning words of her own,
to fill them both with the realest sort of will.


It wasn't just Paris. Together they went in search of a reason to risk
it all. They drove and sailed and flew across vast continents of our life-
giving planet, host to our organism, great intelligence beneath our feet.
They walked barefoot through forests and deserts and fields, gaining
strength from the soul of a planet, wondering if their lives were quite
all they could give. They loved each other proudly and deeply, because
they could not help it, and because above all else it gave them reason
to fight. One foot in front of the other, and page after page after page
after page - they filled that fifteenth notebook, and they steeled
themselves for a loud and terrible fight.


Though his head and his heart were now well prepared, Aristotle
looked to his hands and saw that they were raw and limp. He would
need calluses on those hands before the battle could begin. He would
need to show them how to hold a rifle and a sickle and a hammer and
nail. He would have to show them how to open doors, and how to
build a house in the lonely wilderness. These were things you couldn't
learn from books, but they were no less essential.


Aristotle had never been good with his hands, except for on a
keyboard or in the act of love, but he knew a man who had. Thomas,
the man who first showed him Lucy, who held his head when he had
drank too much rum, who had spoken of the malady before anyone
had a word for it - Thomas could teach Aristotle these things. Thomas
who worked the land.


So Aristotle kicked up dust behind a motorcycle on a dirt road in
California. He was close to Joshua Tree, where a lifetime ago, he and
Thomas had scaled peaks and seen oases, watched the famous Joshua
Trees bloom. It was hard land, but Thomas had made a life out here,
making the arid earth bloom with his sweat and his blood. A wooden
shack peeked over the horizon, and Aristotle revved the engine. He
could see why Thomas had picked this place, where the air was full of
freedom, and the solitude was deep.


Thomas opened the door, and took Ari in a deep embrace.
Aristotle could see that Thomas had never gotten the bug. His eyes
were bright, and a tan beard swung from his chin. It was almost too
much joy, this reunion - not five years or ten years, but the number of
years it takes to learn that you need each other. Thomas didn't know
why Ari had come, but he asked if the world was as sick as ever. From
his luggage, Ari pulled the pathology. The world was getting worse with
every passing minute, he stated, and that's why he had come. It took
two days for Thomas to read what was becoming a manifesto of sorts.
When he had finished, he called to Aristotle, and he told him
something that filled him at once with resolve and fear, both:
"Hell if I knew it, but, all these years, I think I've been waiting for you
to show up here. Let's get to work."


Thomas showed Ari how to work the land. They rose with the sun,
and for many hours they poured the sweat of their labor into the
thirsty earth. The earth bloomed. Thomas said that it was all elemental
- a person had to know how to work the soil, if they wanted to teach
their hands. The other things would follow, but this had to come first.
For two and a half months, they rose each day just at dawn, and went
out into the heat of the alfalfa fields. Thomas seemed to speak to the
soil in the same way that Aristotle spoke to machines - with a loving
whisper and a knowing glance.


As the heat of August began to break, they hayed the feild of their
tall, glorious grass. The wind and the rain had been good to them, good
for them. Aristotle had never been so proud of anything as he was of
those bushels of grain. Thomas had a mournful voice as the the last of
it was threshed:
"Might be my last."


Aristotle knew well what Thomas meant. He assured him that
there would be plenty more harvests when the work ahead was done.
With that they turned and left the field. Before they reached the
house, Aristotle turned to Thomas and asked:
"What's next?"


It was September, and Aristotle said that before the winter came,
Aristotle would have a house of his own, right there, next to his. That
way they could sit on their porches when it was said and done, and tell
stories of how they had cured humanity of a deep disease. I can't tell
you how much Aristotle liked that idea.


So again they set to work. Measuring twice, and cutting once, they
took timber, and turned it into something that could harbor life.
Steadily the calluses grew on Aristotle's palms, had been growing, and
his back got strong and his feet grew tough. Steadily, the house rose
out of nothing, sturdy and humble. Steadily, the men remembered why
they had been the best of friends. When the day was done they sat
together and remembered times they'd had, places they had been,
women they had loved, and the decay, chaos, and sickness they had
seen. In November they lit a fire in the hearth of the new home, and
Thomas said their work was done. As the embers grew hotter,
Aristotle turned to Thomas and asked:
"What's next?"


But for the first time in nearly six months, Thomas didn't have an
answer for Aristotle. They looked into the fire, burning with such
outrageous tranquility in the hearth of the home they had built.
"They're gonna try to kill us, right?"
"You bet your ass they will."
"Well, then, we had better call Curtis."


In their first year of college, when they had just barely become
buddies, Curtis had turned their lives upside down. He was tough, he
was fearless, and he had survived the unforgiving streets of Detroit.
Curtis had come into their room one day, and for the next three years,
he had barely left. More than once he had thrown his body in front of
fists for them, and more than once he had had to take a life. Curtis had
joined the Army after graduation, like his father, and his father's father
before that. If anyone could teach Thomas and Aristotle to fight, it was
Curtis.


Curtis had said that he would always be but a phone call away. In
the days when he had said that, though, it had seemed so abstract.
Neither Aristotle nor Thomas could have imagined looking up his
number some ten hears later, asking him to come to California with a
trunk full of guns. But that's exactly what they did, and true to his
word, Curtis came running. When Aristotle had started to explain why
they needed him, Curtis had stopped him, told him never to say too
much on the phone. That was Curtis' first lesson, and it was Aristotle's
first taste of the clandestinity that would come to pervade his life.


It was a three day drive from Detroit, but Curtis made it in two.
He came screaming down the dirt road to the two houses in the
middle of a vast expanse. The car skidded to a halt, and curtis all but
leapt from the driver's seat.
"What's up, assholes?"


His face was scarred, and his eyes still held the same violent fire.
He had never liked violence, but he had always held it there, in his
eyes, having seen it, and knowing that it sometimes is the only choice.
Aristotle explained what they were doing in the middle of all this
nothing, and gave Curtis a copy of the pathology. Curtis threw it
through the window of his impala, onto a pile of trash.
"You don't have to convince me. I'll read it when we have time. Let's
get to work."


Aristotle and Thomas half expected Curtis to thrust a gun into
their hands. Curtis was too smart for that. He wasn't just a warrior, but
a scholar of war. They spent the next two weeks being tutored on the
art of living in secret. Before and after his time in the Army, Curtis had
done what he'd had to do to make a living in a city bereft of jobs and
brimming with gangs, corruption, and random violence. In addition to
being accustomed to the feel of a rifle, Curtis was an expert in hiding
from, evading, and fighting the authorities. For two years he had been
on the lam, until evidence emerged that he could not possibly have
shot those cops. In fact, he had, but that's exactly the point.


After explaining safe houses and phone taps, surveillance networks
and snitches, Curtis said it was time to get fit. Despite the fact that
they had been doing heavy labor for many moths, Curtis pushed
Aristotle and Thomas to their physical limits, and then kicked them
firmly over the edge. By the point in their regimen where Aristotle was
vomiting from exhaustion, Curtis had barely broken a sweat. They got
stronger - that was the point. They got stronger, and faster, and soon
they learned how to fight. They had had to, or Curtis' swift blows
would have kept coming. They would never be as good as Curtis, but at
least it was something. At least they could put up a fight.


Finally the day came when Curtis took the lock box out of the
trunk of his car. He said they would start shooting when they could
both pick the eight-pin security lock in under a minute. It took
Thomas two weeks to get it down, and took Aristotle three. Having
demonstrated their skill, Curtis said it was time.


They shot handguns at first, then shotguns, and finally rifles. It was
quite alien to Aristotle, the feeling of an implement of death against
his shoulder, and in the palms of his hands. Then it grew normal,
almost natural - almost. Curtis taught them well. After three months of
daily training, they had the skills, and they knew the tactics - they felt
unafraid and ready. Aristotle had spent nine months on Thomas' farm -
nine very long months away from Lucy in the harsh solitude of the
American West. He would soon be ready. He told Thomas and Curtis
that he would return shortly - he only had to take care of something in
Paris.


A final preparation remained before Aristotle could embark on his
mission. One more detail before they would throw their bodies against
the gears, launch the star of revolution, unite the world against the
hideous impulse of destruction. If Aristotle was going to do this, if he
was going to embrace his humanity, he would need to look the part.
Every movement has an aesthetic. Aristotle had learned that in his
studies. It was written in the left margin of page two-twenty-five in
journal number six. Yes, every movement has an aesthetic, and they
needed theirs. Inside of Aristotle, the birth was complete. Now it was
time to align himself, without and within.


On the flight back to Paris, Aristotle peered out the window. It still
amazed him, as it does any thinking person, the sensation of flight. It
was not anger or fear or nervousness that Aristotle felt then, on the
eve of his departure from the vessel of himself, but a tremendous calm.
He was placid, made easy by the knowledge that his path would lead
inevitably to victory or death.


When he reached the apartment, the door flew open, and Lucy
leapt into his arms. He was stronger now, and Lucy could feel his new
prowess in their embrace. His hands were rough, and his skin was
toughened by the semi-desert sun. But still his eyes possessed that
smoldering gaze. That would never change.


Inside the apartment were great stacks of books. They were not
the books that Aristotle had left, but new books, all the same. On the
spine he read 'A Pathology of the Malady of Civilization.' Inside the
volumes, few words were the same as the ones he had written some
three years ago in Phoenix. They were better, clearer - they captured
the sentiment of his ideas more precisely.


The books all carried his name, but really they should have said
Lucy's. She was the one who had made it into something truly worth
reading. She was the one who had brought it to life. But she was too
humble for all that, and in the end it was Aristotle who would have to
mount the defense. He was the one who, as Emerson put it, the world
would whip with its displeasure. That's what he had wanted, though,
and that's what he would get.


Past the tremendous stacks of the small black volume, Ari and
Lucy stumbled into the bedroom. Lucy lit the candles. It was almost a
prayer, the way they made love. They had been reborn, and the feeling
was one of new life. Lucy and Aristotle loved each other with a love
that spilled over and out, like a glacier melting. It flooded down the
street and out into the breathing city - further, engulfing country and
continent, spilling into the sea, making the ocean rise, and soon
engulfing the entire world. It was enough for a planet, what they had -
enough for the whole damn sphere.


When the deluge of their love had ended, they stayed a moment in
that grace, holding each other, fully cognizant of what had to come
next. Lucy reached for Aristotle and found his hand.
"Are you ready, my love?"
"Yes, I am ready."


Still drenched in sweat and sex, they stood. Lucy raised her hand to
Aristotle's head. Strand by strand his curly, messy nest of hair fell to
the floor. In all the time they had known each other, really for as long
as Aristotle could remember, that nest had been a part of him. He
watched it fall, and for a moment it seemed to stay still in the air. But
gravity worked its strange magic, just as it had on his mother's ashes as
the dropped to the pacific. Aristotle remembered. Lucy removed a
black kurt a from the closet, jet black, with silver buttons. Aristotle
slipped inside it. It was done. Aristotle was reborn. Lucy and Iggy and
Thomas and Curtis, too. It had begun.


Can you see him, standing there? I can. I see it all quite clearly, and
I think it's rather beautiful. It took a lot to get him here, but Aristotle
has finally become the man I knew he would be. What a strange
feeling. I want to say that it feels like he's my son. That's not it,
though. He is me, and then so completely not me - he is a part of me,
and yet he is so outside me, beyond me, something else entirely.
Perhaps I'm getting carried away, but it feels as if I've breathed life
into something. You should feel it too, to some degree, if I've done my
job. When you read these words, you make him all over again. What
magic is in these silly scribbles - not just mine, but all. What strange
magic, that from this spilled ink arises something that seems so real. It
is beyond me.


It feels good, though. Even though the deed is not done, I finally
feel like this might have a value outside the joy it brings me. For a long
time I did not think so, but now I am not as sure. The image of
Aristotle standing there, his head freshly shaven and his spirit ready
for what's to come - in a sense it gave me courage. I talked a long time
with Marcus tonight about writing. He is writing, too. In fact, I
basically copied Curtis from him. Anyways, we talked for a long time
about writing, and I guess I got a little scared. I have a battle ahead
too, you know, with this draft, with my own words, with the idea of
having to go back and rework this all. But that image - Aristotle just
standing there - it gave me strength. Who knows, maybe it could give
you some, too. I'd really like that, so let me know if it does. Sometimes
we could all use a little bit of that fifteenth notebook.


Ari is sure going to need it. It's obvious where we're headed from
here. I mean, I basically came on out and said it. Still, I bet it's not
exactly what you think. That would be much fun for either of us. So it
won't be exactly what you think, but it'll probably be pretty close. I
hope that's alright. I mean, he's kind of got to win, right? Unless I want
the book to be a total bummer, and that's not what I want. I want to
be honest and original. That's all. Who knows - maybe that will mean
being a bummer after all. We'll find out, together. In the mean time,
it's going to be one hell of a ride.


I'm quite glad that Lucy's along. I know that it was perhaps a bit
too dramatic, the way he went about getting her back. Then again,
what was I supposed to do? What was he supposed to do? He is a
romantic, and he sure as hell needed her. I know I might have made it
a little harder for him, but what could the point have been? This isn't a
romance, though it is most certainly a love story - it's about revolution.
Anyways, that's the way it happened, the way it would have happened,
the way it will have happened, perhaps. A love like theirs just doesn't
die - of that I'm sure. In any case, she's back, and I'm glad, because I
like what she does to Aristotle.


Now, I know that I should probably quit for the night. It's six-
thirty in the morning, and I've smoked an entire pack of luckies. I'm
just not sure that I can. I mean, for one thing, I'm really itching to get
this over and done with. More than that, though, the next chapter is
basically the one I've been waiting for all this time. I mean, come on,
it's the revolution.

At the same times, I feel like I should save it, savor it, hold off as
long as I can. It's kind of like love, in a way, because you know that
once you start, you're going to have to finish - and once you finish it's
over. It's definitely like love. But nobody turns down love just because
it's ultimately going to end. Plus you get the afterglow.
Yeah, fuck it. Let's do this thing. See you in a second.