I.81 — The Return

You have tried it now, or you have not, and either way the book has done what it can.

It began by refusing to be believed. It ends the same way. Nothing here was ever meant to be carried like a stone, and if any of it has become one — a phrase gripped, a chapter clutched as the truth — set it down here, on the way out. The hand it was written for is an open one.

What you take with you is not these pages. It is a habit of looking, a way of finding the clench and letting it be seen, and a hand that remembers, more often than it used to, that it has a choice. That was the whole offer on the first page. Everything between was only the test of it.

There are people on the road. Some are behind you, some ahead, and none of them outranks you, and you outrank none of them. Walk with an open hand and they will be easier to see.

Now close the book. Go and find today's friction. You know where to look.