glimpsing the other I'm not even sure if I'm alive, or if this world exists. And it seems as if nothing can prove it to me, now that I've accepted the evidence of my senses as fascinating, but inconclusive. I live each day in an absurd reversal of values, where all necessary motions—eating from a plate, taking a shower, moving from place to place—lack conviction. My only experience with what is real comes from glancing encounters with beauty: the pattern of light on a painted wall, a shout and the sound of glass breaking, flashes of understanding exchanged in passing. Why is it that nothing we do intentionally can attain the grace, the perfection of these moments, that vanish before we are aware of them? It is as if the world is torturing us, letting us glimpse the face behind the veil—the face of a powerful, intelligent being like ourselves? the face of our demon lover, for whom we are prey? or simply the absence of all form, all thought?—before returning us to the everyday. Of course, once we have glimpsed the Other, we lose all taste for ordinary things.
	location: Oakland, California date: Winter 1994–1995 average rating: 8.00 (1 vote) your rating (0-10):