Status Updates From The Passion Artist

His fingers on the valves of his trumpet were like mice in a forest filled with snow. By day the sounds of his trumpet filled the village streets, in chorus with the trumpets of the several other members of the boys' marching band. By night those same sounds came faintly from the stars, the planets, unceasingly, until light and sounds together faded and disappeared in the darkness yielding to the falling snow.

But then it began, in darkness and in the midst of what sounded like distant shouting, that long uncoiling of the thick white thread from the bloody pump, that immense and fading constriction of white light inside the flesh. Whom could he thank?

"What is the natural response to the past that is gone? Shame and grief. Shame and grief."

"How many men were capable of knowing, as he full well knew, that the artificial limb, the imitation of a hand in a black glove or the replica of a missing foot in a real boot, adds splendor to the body presumed to be merely maimed?"