j. graham murtaugh just for a moment, so slightly that I could barely feel the beginnings of the atrophy that would come to dominate me. No, the constrictions that would attack my mind, that would shut down functions in order to focus, had not come yet; this was gradual, like smoking, like internal genocide, and I would not see it for years, not for years. But that ďŹ rst time was like encountering the sacred; that night, if I had known of Adam and the Garden, I would have nodded as if we understood each other, as if we shared some intimate secret that made us men. For now I knew, I understood the power of knowledge, I could see it burning in all its pink and red and satin and leather glory, lighting the edges of my room and dripping from the ceiling. I had tasted and had not been satiated.
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