I always did refuse to deal in slaves, saying no to the Chair position and so on, so nothing essential inside of me died.

Even though I did grudgingly sell everything I materially had, which is to say my labor, I was acutely aware of the sketchy and dubious bargain I was cutting and (maybe because of that) never did quite freeze up inside. Maybe that’s ‘integrity’.

At length, just when it looked like I may have danced with the Devil and come out clean and not-poor …

The bottom fell out, once, twice, and that life-altering third time.

What I withdrew from was the System. Partway at first, and then all the way, when I withdrew the pension plum.

I stepped nimbly past the soul death of vassalage. My insides though chilled stayed liquid instead of icing. I withdrew.

What good did that do me, tangled up in blue?

That is the question I’ve been wrestling with, with such sober seriousness, these last days and weeks.

That one and the sperg one–what is this V-syndrome that has shaped me thus?

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on
like a bird that flew