Auto De Fé

When 'me' became rapt in my immediate carnal desires, and myself was the end of those desires, the raison d'être; I sought and intended to exhaust my flesh.

To rid myself of these demons. In the process I pierced my eyes, wore gloves over my hands, stuffed my ears with bright orange ear plugs, and held my nose with my right hand. My tongue I held too dear. Instead I walked with a pair of black sunglasses over my bandaged eyes, holding a cane and a top hat to boot, and I walked to the nearest tea house. There I sat down at the furthest table from the entrance. I asked my good friend, the waitress, Luise Dorothea, a large stout lady of Bavarian descent, to bring me a cupful of earl grey tea every hour on the strike of the grand clock behind her ancient Samovar.

I asked her to describe the tea with her powers of perception that I had so willfully forsaken. She said the tremor over the surface of the tea was like that of a great stygian lake, fuming with prehistoric fumes that would surely scald and incense my tongue. I nodded. She knew that 'it' had started. I was undergoing the last procedure.

You see, Dorothea had been the ear to many of my musings and eyes to the chalk sketches in my large notebook. She fought it first, tried to persuade me, but she learnt very soon that "my flesh had to go." My heart could not bear to beat underneath all this sin. It had to be shed.

My cerebral hemispheres, they alone were capable of instructing me. I yielded to them.