Somewhere in the harvest, they will find what they are looking for. I am said to possess a list of reactionaries and bad elements, and I suppose in a way I do, I just don’t think of it as a list. I call it my life. It is everyone I know who is like me, who chooses not to participate in the network of binding plebiscites and bank loans and credit cards and locatively discursive spimes. They are the small remnant or rebirth of a culture of analogue people who do not entirely believe that this version of life is perfect, who feel constrained rather than liberated by the world which has emerged as much from our heedlessness as from any decision. A very few of them actually protest and engage in civil disobedience. They carry protest cards which give a contact number for a lawyer, and they skirt the edges of the law. And I’m sure, in among them, there are some petty criminals: counterfeiters and rumrunners and such. I don’t ask when I’m sharing candles and early Penguin editions how the members of my book group make their money. Mystery allows for dreams and uncertainty for romance, forgetfulness opens the door for forgiveness and even redemption. In my house the hearth is unbroken by the endless torrent of the outer world. It is, like marriage or liberty, not a thing but an action: a process we must create rather than a rock on which we may stand.