Page 208

By Jack Joseph Smith

the thought; a resurgance quivered in Animal's throat. To question the emotion from star to void. The graywhite steel cords tied into the continuous form of a tunnel. No blue veins connected to the heart for pumping. But also there, with eyes like those lining up a leverage-board to lift or let down, Maria's applied dependence on Montreal's hold on her reality faded out from any focus on mystery untill the scene stopped. "It is gone." "Yes, it is time for me to go to lying in my bed; and dream beyond tomorrow for my daughters." "Can they not dream for themselves?" "But Monsieur; my daughters sleep walk with their slippers on." The night passed. The man from Montreal had gone to sleep in Maria's home. The next morning, saddened; he had left knowing that the changes of the beach would strip her last dignity from her, which was her home. It would be torn down, crumb- led within not to long a period of time. And then where would her daughters go, but to marriage? To watch their forced youth walk away would certainly be the death of Maria, for no mothers warm home would exist, not even for Holydays.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Once the weight disappears, the scene opens out into the brutal practical truth beneath Marie's sorrow: the coming destruction of her home and the likely dispersal of her daughters.

The page makes the metaphysical exercise answer to material reality. What looked like symbolic pain is rooted in redevelopment, displacement, and the erosion of a mother's last domain of care.

Claude

Animal's body registers the ceremony as something near-mechanical - 'graywhite steel cords tied into the continuous form of a tunnel,' 'No blue veins connected to the heart for pumping' - and he watches Maria's 'applied dependence on Montreal's hold on her reality' fade 'untill the scene stopped' with her flat 'It is gone.' Her parting line is the page's ache: she will 'dream beyond tomorrow for my daughters,' and when asked if they cannot dream for themselves, she answers 'my daughters sleep walk with their slippers on.' The aftermath is pitiless and material - Montreal leaves 'saddened,' knowing 'the changes of the beach would strip her last dignity from her, which was her home,' soon 'torn down,' the daughters dispersed 'but to marriage,' and 'no mothers warm home would exist, not even for Holydays.' The metaphysical exercise answers, finally, to demolition and displacement.