Preface

One day as I wrote a shadow crossed my soul. What if someone mistook my wild imaginings for the words of God?

Two things delivered me from this shadow, and by three I was released from darkness: a donkey and a pair of apostles. A vision came to me of Shakespeare's egotistical, solemn and silly Bottom the Weaver. You will remember that Bottom was frigntened that he might imitate a lion's roar so well that the women of Duke Theseus' court would veritably think him a lion. Bottom became the ass he was and well it did become him. And, at the writing of this preface, all my fears are but pains in the bottom: no one knows me for a man let alone a prophet!

The second deliverance came from the Apostle Peter. He mentions that some who are 'ignorant and unstable' twist the difficult sayings of the Apostle Paul to their own destruction. If such holy bread as the apostles' inspired utterance can be twisted, then as a matter of course the ramblings of a madman pressed against the wall of existence may be twisted.

Dark, dark, dark is the heart at the end of the world, pressed to the wall of existence. But I look up and see brighter worlds, and to lighten my years in prison: I write of them.