The prophet Ezekiel wandered the earth. He was a homeless wanderer, one of the ones who sleep in the thresholds of office buildings, one of the kind who know how much heat cold concrete can suck out of the body (and unless you’ve ever slept on cold concrete you can never know this). He was one of the ones who know that the worst part of being cold is the feeling in the hands, the way the hands numb up, the constant pain in the hands. Ezekiel knew all this. He came wandering the earth, a soldier in the war between sleep and wakefulness. He finally found his way to Denver, and I said to him, "I would invite you in to sleep in my kitchen, but my apartment is small and filthy, and unworthy of you." He said to me, "If your apartment is unworthy of me, how much less worthy is the bus shelter! But I would prefer your apartment to a large house with empty spaces everywhere, for these make me feel alone, so surrounded by so much empty space." So he came to my apartment and looked at my manuscript, what I had written so far in this book. "You tell only half-truths and only one side of things," he said. "You do not represent things how they really stand." "What side have I left unrevealed?" I asked, for I truly wanted to know. "You have left out everything that lies beyond the grave," said Ezekiel, "and without that, how are we to know how to act, what to do with our lives, how to go about saving ourselves from disaster?

Truly this world

is merely a test and crucible

to separate the ravenous from the generous

to distinguish wolves from gentle dogs."