Winston K. Marks

“ But then I stepped into my bedroom and stood before my full-length mirror—where I have stood rooted ever since.
And the question revolves in my brain, punctuated only by my profanity and sobs of despair. How can I marry Betty now? How can I face her, let alone marry her?
What woman on earth could bring herself to marry a man with no navel ... ”

“ Marrying Betty is out of the question even if she'd have you the way you are. You're not that two-faced!
Quit standing in front of the mirror, naked and shaking, looking for scars, counting your fingers and toes. You've taken a hundred inventories, and it always comes out wrong. And it always will, unless ... unless they come back. But that's hopeless. They'd never find me again. Not out of all the people on earth. Besides, they didn't seem to give a damn. No more than a kid gives a damn what happens to a lump of modelling clay when he gets bored squeezing it into this shape and that. ”

“ What common points of reference could I have with these two unthinkably alien life-forms?
The answer whipped back at me on an intuitive, sub-vocal level: Thought is a universal energy manifestation. Language is only the clumsy vehicle for thought. ”