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Remote Cloister Brothers, the demon who faces greedily forward, whose servants look steadily back, and who profits from Time has set his sights on our constricted now. Soon we’ll be in the street. Soon neatness will fail to hide our fraying cloth, while every pose of eagerness to serve the demon shows only age, confusion, and total uselessness to him. A laugh at our expense will again inflect all laughter. Another negative report on each of us will join those that already fill the files of the world. The noise made by the door that was always closed may almost drown the voice you heard when you came here, which said Humiliation is good; that it teaches everything but how to avoid it; that you should regard yourself as lost, not as a loser. We knew the cold sheets of motels and charity wards would be the price of knowledge. There the mother who denied you tucks you in, while Father in his white coat impatiently checks your pulse. Those who betrayed you buy your last tasteless dinner; visitors whom you betrayed toast you all night in acid wine. Not only you, they console you, but every man is mistaken, a nearsighted visionary, a futile passion ... Brothers, I too salute you! Let us cherish, while we can, our high, blind windows, the wasteland beyond, each other’s intolerable company. Then the deceiving demon whose charms we also know may praise, in terms that are in the end meaningful, the joy of letting go.