But most of us need help, and practice. Another curriculum is. Consequently I have a piece of helpful advice before taking leave of you. Go to a pound where you decide to settle down. Take home an old, ugly, sick dog or cat, preferably unfriendly.
Convenience is part of that other curriculum.
Observe your new, ungrateful friend so intently, with such concentration on the proposition that you are this living being who needs you, that in time you will know when and how you must come to your friend's aid. You'll find yourself housebound, worried, and short on funds, veterinary bills not being covered by Blue Cross - salubrious inconveniences, together with the strengthening of your powers of identification, advancing you to another Commencement, in the school of the larger world. A note on simultaneity. Contemplation occurred in that larger, chromatically lit and mystery-laden mental space. Six hundred years.