The second page

The arrangement of pages in a book or frames on a computer screen is pleasing to me. I am smitten with the notion that each page in this book stands by itself, independent of all others, even as it serves the greater whole.

This might be found contradictory in a person whose greatest fear is containment, but the fear is compensated by control of the page.

Perhaps a dislodgable memory of my youth might guide us, though it does not serve the classical definition by how claustrophobia might be come by. I equate my disorder with the unsophisticated notion that the inability to escape an enclosure is no different from wanting the mastery of any social situation.

The text for today’s little sermon might come from E.A. Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” in the beautiful, though now faded, Classics Comics version. Recalling the glorious opening gives me continuing pleasure and a concomitant frisson of fear: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” And the child that remains in me shudders with delight as I recall the gentleman’s terrified screams: “For the love of God, Montresor!” and Montresor hoists the mortar and trowel. With an unforgettably satisfying leer he seals in the poor son of a bitch’s fate in the last frame. Thwunk.