"Integrity"

ROBERT C. EVERETT is a short-story fiction writer who utilizes a variety of forms and nuances in his work. He lives in Colorado with his wife, Bridgette, and their three children.

I can't think anymore, nothing is as it seems...my very nature is changing, forming and shaping itself into something incoherent and spherical...I can feel it, you know...it's good to feel something raw and complete--or, at the very least, almost complete.

Why do you say that?
Why don't you believe in yourself, Bill?
Angels keep talking to me...they tell me that I'm no good...
Then they're not angels, are they?
I overheard the second-year psychiatric resident...he thinks that I'm paranoid...he's even got a brand new DSM-IV to prove it...
What do you think you are?
A good person...a person who cares too much...a person who's been taken for granted...a person who hears voices...a person who's trying to determine the integrity of things and animals...
Integrity?
Yes...

Mr. Barrett, can you come up with a correspondence between quantum physics and aspects of your own personal theology? Do you have a personal theology, Mr. Barrett?

Yes.

Well, then...would you be kind enough to form an analogous relationship between the purported transcendent and immanent qualities of God and a proven theory of quantum mechanics? Would you be so kind?

Quantum superposition, you pompous asshole. Happy?

Yes, Mr. Barrett. Quite happy. Thank you.

Deconstructionist theories, paradigm shifts, accelerated learning, the universe is whole and complete and we're the ones who aren't...we won't allow ourselves to be...

Can you prove that? Bill?

I can't prove nothin'...

# # #

"A seventeen year old boy finds his father hanging by the rafters in the downstairs basement...where's the integrity in that?"

"I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambolling before my eyes...long rows sometimes more closely fitting together; all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes has seized its own tail and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke. ...Let us learn to dream, gentleman."

-August von Kekule, who discovered the ring of six carbon atoms which is the central structure of organic chemistry.

A definitive example of melding dream and non-dream realities/entitites into one dynamic state. This is integrity. [B.B.]

"Je cherche a comprendre"

integrity

"My father once told me that a man's most important resource was his integrity. My old man was dead wrong--sanity is a man's most important resource...integrity comes in a very distant second...
Bill Barrett

in the beginning, god created immense pain and suffering, followed by the dim awareness of self-being...

in the beginning, god created self-denial and abbreviated forms of self-delusion, which can cause a diminished ability to see the "face" of the divine (does that make sense?)...

"I think I'm feeling better now, at least a little bit better. I really do think so."