Once again Mr. James reminds me with his "girl/boy song" just what the purpose of beauty is. His music is melodic and romantic enough to be moving, but abstract and unsentimental enough to be distancing, so that like a kitten held by the scruff of the neck, I'm forced to hold still long enough to get a good look around. And to see the world for what it truly is. Beauty is the world's way of reminding you that it has nothing to do with you, but that you have everything to do with it.

Mr. James also likes to remind me (so gleefully) that the world, or at least the world he sees, is really better than any self-indulgent fantasy he or I might have, for the simple miraculous reason that it is real. If you decide, or rather, your contingency in the world should decide that you require something, your only hope is to make it happen, and if it can't or won't happen, the world will still be real, and you will have changed, and whatever comes next will come next. Pull yourself up by your necktie and give yourself and the world a look around. It is full of magic and wonder.

Hence my writing here. I, funny chlo'jo'lo', the unrepentant pentahydrous quinundine, am just trying to give you a taste of the magic that shoots through every moment of my world. If you ever longed for the world where all the gods and goddesses of old times finally escaped to, I'm here to tell you not to stick your nose in some tawdry fantasy novel or to waste two hours of daylight settled into some overblown businessman's movie epic. You don't need incantations and spells. That divine world is still here, all around you, and I'm going to show you where we've all hid.