THE ANGEL OF THE LORD JUST DECLARED WE AREN’T WORTH A THING.
THE UNIVERSE IS NULL AND VOID: ALL THE CHILDREN SING
So exclaims Todd Rundgren, that American McCartney, in a song from my youth, which also might be set at the beginning of Olanda as a motto to the entire volume. For this too is a common theme that runs through nearly all of the stories in this collection. Existence, absurd or not, is a gift; we must enjoy it, whether or not there is a Giver, for the very reason that it is ‘passing by.’ In Olanda, the narrator claims:
Memory ceases to exist. Graves vanish and it’s finished. A person perishes, forever. And the traces that remain for the next successors to existence become nothing more than ciphers of a spell, of bugbears; a cry for help and the menacings of the same sort of h
