If There Is Any Good

I Wondered Why She Craved This Knowledge And Found Myself Remembering That She Was, After All, An Anthropologist.

Never Before Had I Known The Sudden Quiver Of Understanding That Travels From Word To Brain To Heart, The Way A New Language Can Move, Coil, Swim Into Life Under The Eyes, The Almost Savage Leap Of Comprehension, The Instantaneous, Joyful Release Of Meaning, The Way The Words Shed Their Printed Bodies In A Flash Of Heat And Light.

The Very Worst Impulses Of Humankind Can Survive Generations, Centuries, Even Millennia. And The Best Of Our Individual Efforts Can Die With Us At The End Of A Single Lifetime.

He Brought His Great Hand To Rest On An Early Edition Of Bram Stoker's Novel And Smiled, But Said Nothing. Then He Moved Quietly Away Into Another Section.

It's Funny; In This Era Of E-mail And Voice Mail And All Those Things That Even I Did Not Grow Up With, A Plain Old Paper Letter Takes On Amazing Intimacy.