Page 242
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Maria's vision becomes less messianic certainty than cosmic drift, even as the girls and Joe keep trying to give that drift public form and narrative momentum.
This page is full of unstable elevation. Maria is both exalted and diffuse, and Joe's refusal to sing too softly suggests that performance is the only way the crowd knows how to hold such a vision.
The risen people chant 'where is she coming from...?!!!!' as Maria stands swaying 'as a reef with many trees,' refusing to be 'a city domesticated mother swan' and going 'over the modern desert storm as a sheba.' Asked 'Are you seeing the Ark Angel,?' she instead sees herself 'as one of a million centers on the beach with no purpose or possibility,' and Joe answers 'I am not ready to sing so softly.' By the sixth day, told the men are anxious, she deflects upward: 'We are all children of the Godless gods, and the universe is not anxious for us.' This reading remains provisional because handwritten revisions around the reef/tree line are unresolved.