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I’M MAKING MY WAY ACROSS the Hillside toward Dean Howell’s house on Thursday night in a mood that can only be described as no better than fractious, when into my head pops an image of a man walking rapidly toward a cliff so high that off its precipice is nothing but a huge blanket of clouds. My view of the man is panoramic, for I must be situated upon some venue higher than the cliff toward which the man strides, and I observe that over the next rise in his path his doom awaits. The mind, if given full rein, can perform the most extraordinary feats, and mine now gallops to a realization that I am the man approaching the cliff. Yet, I do not stop my climb. My gait is purposeful, and my considered intention is, in fact, to hurl my body and soul into the white uncertainty that stretches be
