Every Gambler Knows

Sometimes—even when one has left the house much earlier than usual, after not watering the outside plants in days, taking the train one stop up (being buried in books, thus too laden for too-long walking)—one needs plain coffee (rather than something more akin to cocoa) because it is just that bitterness, precisely that acrid darkness, that little cup of gustatory penitence, which can set an appropriate tone for the day.

My mind wanders.

Assumption does not sound like such a bad deal.

(I cannot drink this fast enough—enough cream to cool a bit, but not to alter the fundamental feeling.)

One can only stay on one's knees for so long before one starts to think that God is just the cosmic omphalo into which we skepsis—a parabola that sends back not-quite-echoes of our often pointless prayers, which we then take for truth.
   Sometimes it doesn't matter that we know something to be true. Sometimes knowledge doesn't help.
   If knowledge is power and ignorance bliss, tell me—which would you really rather have?
   It feels like a curse to always want to know.