The doctor exited through the entrance because he owned the place. Little Delia sat catty corner. She watched him curse his broken umbrella, calling it a "faggot piece of shit", which to her did not connote a broken umbrella but rather a secret sexual fantasy. Delia had been walking, splashing through the rain. It was heavy rain which made little Delia's clothes and huge backpack heavier. She knew the place she was going, a memory of its brick facade having been burned into her head like a brand, but not where she was or where she was headed. They had told her the people in this city were mean and unnoticing, but in her new experience they were helpful and sweet.  The men all gave her the rundown of who was what & what was where in this town, and the women wanted to know was she okay, honey, do you have a place to stay sweetheart. The only problem was they didn't give good directions, as though they knew the city intuitively but thinking about it confused them. Delia was not afraid of the endless droning city. She enjoyed her company more than anyone else's which is why she left in the first place. Delia cracked her knuckles and shoulders frequently and loudly. She was sure she could pop her hips louder than anyone else in the world. She wondered what other world records she held. She sexualized everybody and wanted everyone to do the same. It was the rain that brought it on especially, wetness being the essence of the erotic for little Delia. She wanted her hair to be wet all the time which led to constant visits to public restrooms where she'd splash cool water on the top of her head, face and back of neck.
          So she sat and waited for an invisible force to arrive, enter & move her physically. She felt that since the terrors had begun she'd lost her autonomy. Delia craved a strong-bodied master above all else. A casually cruel master who would release her of all duties & decision-making. Delia hadn't expected this arrive in the form of an invisible puppeteer, but destruction of expectation was another deep desire, which seemed like sadomasochism to an observer, but was more like a craving of release. So she was moved around by an eros-god who gave no answers or reasons. Delia followed omens and coincidence. She tried to learn to prophesize by bird-signs. Some of her toes were purpleblack from miles of walking and huge blisters popped up on her heels like airbags. She had little cuts all over her hands and knees. She had claustrophobic dreams of mushrooms sprouting from her face instead of zits. 
          The bus stop contained three people who appeared to be decomposing & the big bluegray bus came like a vulture. They clambered inside and little Delia followed.
          The bus ride was standard, nothing to speak of. At regular intervals the brakes squealed to a slow stop and the aging people tapped each other in and out. Delia thought she could have walked quicker, though that would have meant decision making. She wondered who would come to tap her out. The subway would have been many times quicker--even the word hurtling is more connotative of fate than driving or crawling--but the last time little Delia tried to hop over the subway turnstile her huge pack got stuck and she got embarrased. They said the people in this city were unnoticing, but really they noticed and said nothing, no response, which to Delia was tortuous. 
          So she rode great bounding circles around a tiny portion of the city. Nobody came to twist the arm of her fate....does fate not suggest a flowing maiden, 200 feet tall, taking great bounding steps across the west? such is the nature of the American propaganda machine, and who could twist the arm of that?...no, the bus ride went as scheduled, which is a rarity in itself, though not one which throws objects in to spinning. 
          Delia did not think of much, though she ruminated greatly. We find the most exact description of her particular state in Dostoevsky's wonderful analysis of a painting: “The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator: it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and bast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is "contemplating" something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it--why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both." 
          It is with these impressions that little Delia will come to turn the cosmos. It is by holding these images dearly to her breast that she will survive the breathless rise and disatrous fall of Athena's tapestry, that she will become our immortal player. 

          What is meant by this? Let us never wish to be mysterious or witholding by intention; we aim to tell the truth directly, or at least honestly. The matter at hand is the story of tragic young lady named Delia. Tragic because she will soon die, in her 23rd revolution around the ancient Sun, and be born again as a young lad named Matthew. Being halfway through her 22nd year, Delia was arriving at the end of a cycle...that cycle by which the ancients measured evolution, or perhaps more presently, how a small group of Jewish mystics living in Spain in the 15th century mapped out the process of manifestation, known as the Tree of Life, or Tarot.
           Six months until the end of the cycle meant that the new cycle had already begun, accounting for nine months spent in the womb of her mother, a dear Irish woman called Mary O'Connor, a person with the rare ability, considering the general predispostiton of her race, to not fear God but accept the holy spirit as that which animates all things in the world, and makes life pleasant. Therefore, Delia would soon relive that forgotton trauma which haunts us always, called birth. But little Delia had not forgotten birth. She came out blue and silent and tiny, after 25 hours of Mary's labor. She very nearly died every day for the first three weeks of life outside the womb, and then, as if by firm decision, learned how to breath correctly, and all her tiny organs began to work, like an old car vigorously starting. Of course this was all told to Delia by her mother, but she accepted it as memory and therefore remembered it. 
           The impressions which Delia was now holding to her breast on the bus were much like those of pre-birth. She felt, wordlessly, that she had become too big for the life she was living. She was a full grown person now, but confined by her schoolgirl aspiritations of the city she felt claustrophobic...a primordial desire to grow urged her on...it's time to go. Therefore, by necessity, Delia would soon leave the big city and go south. A song she liked played in her head; "go down where people say y'all". She will soon go to Texas, transforming on the way into Matthew; will meet Agonie, little Monk and Alexander, who have already begun to prepare the way for him. It is in this way that The Machine will be contructed...everyone one of us nobly doing what we must, like the Russian farmer in the days of the Tsars, we humbly toil in the mud and let the monks, in their holy silence, do the real work.