koan lycanthrope Address the world as it should be, it will not answer. Address the world as it is, and if it does not answer, it is answering. The sun spins off warmth and blinding gold, across the faces of the filthy man asleep against the dumpster of the interstate motel, the snow leopard at 17,000 frigid feet, and your own children in the colorful sanctuary of their rooms - all at the same constant. Their lungs stir in air with the same shallow, then deepening breaths. Their eyes open, the world answers. I'm far away from all of them but the filthy man asleep right now. Out of town to attend a funeral mass in another language for a once close friend. Prayers always seem more meaningful in another language. Your own prayer in your own language, to be effective, must be in another language in a sense. The man in the casket left behind three children, young, around the age I was at my father's funeral. I remember the disorientation, the constant procession of strange large hands to shake, the awkward silence of it to break. It's hard to see them in such pain, but I cannot look away. There will be imperfect love, additional pain, and celestial ceremonies of loss in their lives, in all of our lives. If you address the world as it is, and it answers, it has answered. The farthest our prayers ever reach, on littered concrete or the diamond snow just below the sun, is our own praying eyes and the breath that follows. The lungs that convert to oxygen, the love or despair, the sun's half-life we carry or bury or share. 260916 what's it to you? who go blather from