Configurations

Configurations of habit and the blind destiny of rats spell (for the most part) the pages of our day. We are conscious only by moments that do not multiply, except as the pattern dissolves in the dissolve of the general credibility, since the fictions in which we move contain us and their author too, each plot turning back at the critical moment into the crazy orbits the pattern dictates, so that nothing quite pans out and each character shuffles off as the endings turn false to take its place in the rondure's quick turning. But why waste the hour with these explanations, since this is, after all, scarcely the moment to insist upon what is bound to declare itself regardless, nor is the suspense very great when the whirl is so swift that the pattern discloses itself when you take a fix (if you can) on a point outside the page. Then they begin to crowd back, those more than fictive forms that can only go about their business of steadily emerging, crowding through the interstices of our

vision, whatever our reticences, forming at each new stage bolder and more definite patterns than our deftest calculations could anticipate, while the characters, (including yourself) withdraw into their habits to clone themselves witlessly, like the days of certain seasons when for no reason the weather is bad, or the turns in the plot of a very bad book that we at last put down to sleep or wake.