Page 257

By Jack Joseph Smith

So bright! So bright the night! O! Yes, it's com- fortable here; bull shit, that's not me thinking Look around me, you; Animal look around yourself! The peace of it (Why suddenly must he be billowed out?) Out there he forgets what he was thinking, of the moment, he howls like northwest moongod nowhere in that vastning he is thronged by images crawling like down out of mountain skin finding themselves some- how deformed great, and at that moment seeing. They could live with no victories. He had walked in museums in the Eastern part of America as a child with his mother dreaming, in a way that made him feel exact about things when he experienced things fall. He knew walking that he had somehow walked out of love. Not that he was walking away from it in the mental sense, but that possibility of him be- ing able to nearly accept that state of mind again so temptingly seemed remote. He did not know why, but it crossed his mind that leaving the mountains no matter for what reason was going back. It wasn't prestige bringing him this way of thinking, it was

Original Scan

Page 257

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page returns to Animal's interior register, where moonlit self-rebuke gives way to memories of museums, mountains, love, and a troubling sense of retreat.

The page pivots from pursuit to accounting. Animal tries to separate the present fear from older images of childhood, mountains, and failed attachment, but the memory work keeps turning back toward compromise and loss.

Claude

Moonlit self-rebuke opens the page - 'So bright the night! O! Yes, it's comfortable here; bull shit, that's not me thinking' - before Animal is 'thronged by images crawling... down out of mountain skin' that find themselves 'deformed great' and 'could live with no victories.' Memory pulls back to walking 'museums in the Eastern part of America... with his mother dreaming,' and to the dread that 'he had somehow walked out of love,' that 'leaving the mountains... was going back.' The pursuit gives way to a quiet, comfortless reckoning with loss and retreat.