field of cotton and sugarcane and indigo and dispatched many families to the salt mines. Mrs. Sweet brought her produce to market as cash crops, as manufactured goods, as raw human labor, and made an outlandish profit and with her profit she then made lyres and people who could play them and then she built a concert hall, a concert hall so large that to experience it required the fanaticism of a pilgrim. On that day when Mrs. Sweet gathered the lyres and the people who could play them in the great concert hall in which that elaborate and complicated and unique and earth-changing fugue of Mr. Sweet’s was to be finally played, Mr. Sweet came down with a case of sore tendons in his heels. And it was very true, his heels were sore they hurt so much, and on top of that what rage came over him to see that the dear Mrs. Sweet had made his impossible demand possible. In this atmosphere of Mrs. Sweet’s accomplishments, so magical they were, Mr. Sweet grew, but in resentment and hatred, not in love, not in gratitude.
I have not lived my life as a scholar, said Mr. Sweet, still smarting from the insults Mrs. Sweet had hurled at him, especially that recent one with the concert hall and the one hundred musicians; she had asked him to close the garage door behind him, wash the dishes, wipe down the counter, clean the kitchen sink, take out the garbage, I have not lived my life as a scholar it is true, said Mr. Sweet, but neither was I meant to do such things, I cannot do such things.
And Mr. Sweet lay down on the chair in his studio above the garage, the chair with legs that ended in the shape of the paws of a large cat. A loud crack and a roar came through the closed windows. Heracles had released his pride of caged lions. A current of hatred traveled quickly through Mr. Sweet’s body but it did not threaten to consume him, and so he settled down and looked up. Above him was the domed ceiling painted a cerulean blue, receding into infinity if looked at unblinkingly for too long. Dim lights appeared here and there, and then brightly shone the constellations starting with Orion, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, arc to Arcturus, Canis Major and Minor, Castor and Pollux, and on and on expanding ever outward to the edge of night. Pyramids of thoughts and feelings hounded the dear man now as he lay sweetly on the chair: his beloved flannel-covered slippers that had been given to him by his mother when he turned twelve years old had developed holes in their soles and the slippers could not be repaired and they could not be replaced exactly, for no longer were slippers of that kind made. Mr. Sweet could still wear those slippers even now that he was a middle-aged man, he had not grown a half inch since he turned twelve. The world was cold and unmindful of his poor soul. The sky above, even as it was just the cerulean-blue ceiling in the studio above the garage, was vast, and it expanded out, smooth and also rippling, containing heavens and havens too, spaces that pulsed like an important artery in a body but without its importance or responsibility, spaces in which everyday experience could not settle. The thin edge of night, not so dark yet, framed the cerulean blue. The thin edge of night will give way to an unyielding darkness but Mr. Sweet just then held this, the thin edge of night, not too close to him. The thin edge of night is a metaphor, I shall write a symphony, a covert allusion to this, the thin edge of night is a metaphor, said Mr. Sweet to himself, and only to himself. In the meantime, the fixed point in the cerulean-blue ceiling expanded and expanded in Mr. Sweet’s mind, as if he had been influenced by a consciousness-altering drug or as if he had willed himself to see it so. The universe, or so it seemed to Mr. Sweet or anyone else and by anyone else he meant Mrs. Sweet, the young Heracles, and the sister with the lustrous curls, as he lay face upward; the thin edge of night expanded outward and
I have not lived my life as a scholar, said Mr. Sweet, still smarting from the insults Mrs. Sweet had hurled at him, especially that recent one with the concert hall and the one hundred musicians; she had asked him to close the garage door behind him, wash the dishes, wipe down the counter, clean the kitchen sink, take out the garbage, I have not lived my life as a scholar it is true, said Mr. Sweet, but neither was I meant to do such things, I cannot do such things.
And Mr. Sweet lay down on the chair in his studio above the garage, the chair with legs that ended in the shape of the paws of a large cat. A loud crack and a roar came through the closed windows. Heracles had released his pride of caged lions. A current of hatred traveled quickly through Mr. Sweet’s body but it did not threaten to consume him, and so he settled down and looked up. Above him was the domed ceiling painted a cerulean blue, receding into infinity if looked at unblinkingly for too long. Dim lights appeared here and there, and then brightly shone the constellations starting with Orion, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, arc to Arcturus, Canis Major and Minor, Castor and Pollux, and on and on expanding ever outward to the edge of night. Pyramids of thoughts and feelings hounded the dear man now as he lay sweetly on the chair: his beloved flannel-covered slippers that had been given to him by his mother when he turned twelve years old had developed holes in their soles and the slippers could not be repaired and they could not be replaced exactly, for no longer were slippers of that kind made. Mr. Sweet could still wear those slippers even now that he was a middle-aged man, he had not grown a half inch since he turned twelve. The world was cold and unmindful of his poor soul. The sky above, even as it was just the cerulean-blue ceiling in the studio above the garage, was vast, and it expanded out, smooth and also rippling, containing heavens and havens too, spaces that pulsed like an important artery in a body but without its importance or responsibility, spaces in which everyday experience could not settle. The thin edge of night, not so dark yet, framed the cerulean blue. The thin edge of night will give way to an unyielding darkness but Mr. Sweet just then held this, the thin edge of night, not too close to him. The thin edge of night is a metaphor, I shall write a symphony, a covert allusion to this, the thin edge of night is a metaphor, said Mr. Sweet to himself, and only to himself. In the meantime, the fixed point in the cerulean-blue ceiling expanded and expanded in Mr. Sweet’s mind, as if he had been influenced by a consciousness-altering drug or as if he had willed himself to see it so. The universe, or so it seemed to Mr. Sweet or anyone else and by anyone else he meant Mrs. Sweet, the young Heracles, and the sister with the lustrous curls, as he lay face upward; the thin edge of night expanded outward and