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No, not yet. September has come and gone and I am far from healed, far from being a Christian. As the month on the calendar changed, the ridiculous knight rode through all the brittle leaves on the sidewalk, the emblem of October. On the corners children gathered and began to prepare for the coming day of pagan fear and family closeness on the last day of the month. But it couldn't really be October, could it be? Could time be moving so fast? The calendars and chronometers didn't lie -- but in a way they did. They would run down like thermodynamic laws, they went in only one direction, which was that of the knight's and everyone's dissolution. But he was riding in the other direction, against biology and physics really, not against in any conceptual sense but in a ride more fundamental than that -- just the other direction, against whatever flow they made. So as he moved into middle age, into withering and death, he felt a strength and even a dim glowing of light up ahead, if he only could figure out -- just how to move into the place where it was.
Horses grazed and humans rested, only it wasn't really resting. It was resting that was full of tension and needed another name. In twilight the anchoress prayed and let all the poor people through her gate. You had to assume that she knew which direction one was supposed to go. She looked like Elise. Otherwise he would have run away.
So Dave lay down and dreamed his usual irrational nightdreams, knowing that the devil would be sure to use them to try to ruin him - but knowing also that God was in there too, hidden within the burning yellow images and crackling October leaves.
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