SUNDAY SCRIBBLINGS



The sky whirled and continued to whirl, streaming yellow with flashes of pink---the images on the ceiling of the sky appeared like projections of alien entertainments mixed with portents of our dark future---images of smoke, hundreds of mouths speaking at once, beasts running.

Collisions in places beyond our earth's atmosphere boomed deep and quaking.

We asked ourselves whether this was a government exercise, a military folly, but knew in our hearts that it was nothing of the sort. Something had come to our arm of the galaxy. Something our limited minds could not conceive of except to call it "something." We couldn't say that it was "out there," because it felt as much inside ourselves---a presence deep in our ears, a trembling in our solar plexus where that persistent boom lived. It knew us, but we did not know it.

How long would it go on?

Then, a professor of Aztec culture announced that he had found something which might illuminate our plight. The press conference lasted well into the night and apartments windows across the city flickered with blue light as the professor shared his findings with the world.

When he was done, the journalists, for once, were speechless. Finally a reporter from Bolivia asked the professor if he might not, really, be mad. The other journalists looked hopeful, but the professor closed his eyes, breathed deeply once, and said, "What I have just told you is a theory, no more. However it is the only theory we have so far which fits the facts perfectly."