Dave tries not to lie

*

Because only what you actually are can be saved -- not what you pretend to be -- nothing is more important than actually being that horrible appalling person that, so unfortunately, you in fact are. Be what you are, not somebody else, even if that somebody else is better. Because if you pretend to be well when you are ill, and then God rewards and saves the well image of you, what happens to the reality, the sick person you actually are? Who benefits when the the poster of the actress is blessed but the actress is not?

If nothing else, telling the truth at all times is imperative. Truth is not a luxury.

*

Now the man who had saved Dave from being abused every night in prison had also brought him to read Kierkegaard -- that impossible Danish philosopher & scold -- that awkward unglamorous *Christian*, of all things -- now reduced to sad somber dog-eared porridge in the prison library. Kierkegaard was the road to many a religious conversion in prison, because even the books' obscurity somehow pointed outward, which was enough.

When Dave didn't understand a word -- and he didn't understand very many or perhaps any -- he would simply use that word as a placeholder in his traversal of the sentence. He would read the words anyway. So a word like "ideality" -- and what the hell is that anyway? what could it be within a prison? -- he would simply hold like a precious jewel and lay it down carefully in the context of the paragraph. It seemed to rest on dark velvet. It was what he didn't have and what still existed anyway, austere and quite graspable. Over time "ideality" and "reduplication" took on some sort of meaning that was what they came to mean for him, which was something beyond freedom.

*

Now, today, on parole, free but not free, he would reread the books as intently as a man trying to re-find himself. "The strivings [of a businessman or professor] are worn like gaudy clothes -- but people reaching for the absolute seem to be walking around naked, they offend everybody, you can't help laughing."

The mouth that tells the truth is ugly, repulsive.

Yes, Dave said. But not to God.

*