CLOAK/1.13The Drawing Master's LessonHaving determined to create a self-portrait for entrance in the competition, Senator Isaye seeks instruction from the drawing master. |
| The Senator admits to wishing sometimes that he'd trained to be an artist. The drawing master shrugs, begins the lesson: |
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The thick and persistently unfoldable map of the roads not taken, stuffed in the glove
compartment like a joke shop snake, every time it gets you, all over the floor at sixty miles an
hour—I could have been this, I could have done that, choices not made, things never realized
until it's too late, all the tiresome baggage strewn—you're a wreck, you're the very least you could have
been and done, the faintest pulse— at this rate you're always reviving, always walking away from the wreckage— but this is a dream, you see it, yes, you follow, it's just a flash of thought you get sometimes upon the road, the road in fact being taken. Do not try to drive while consulting alternative routes. Do not stick at false imaginings, do not get sticky from that glue. |
Pick off the leeches of fantasy endings, blooded and salty return to the helm.
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