ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 109
On Sufficient Causes
Children are machines amongst whose purposes is the conversion of food into nitrogenous paste. This rather elegant process is
preserved intact until the irregularities of time beset and disrupt
its functioning, and is only resumed in its proper mechanism by
the application of Special K and broccoli. Mistaken ideas have, from
time to time, suggested to people that humanity consists of more
than this wonderful process of creation, and processes like it. It is
mechanical in the best sense, as the machine whirling the spheres
of heaven is mechanical. Mistaken ideas are one of the byproducts
of its progress. The wonderful production of children is itself one of
the later conversion processes of the human machine, and its byproduct is that sometimes mistaken idea, the family. Mistaken ideas
are the foundation upon which the rich edifice of humanity is built,
itself a mistaken idea. But nevermind this abstraction.
On one of those whirling spheres previously referred to, the blue
and white one, there is a bit of rock, at present facing the glowing
motor of its life, in the midst of summer. Etched in one side of that
rock is a bit of a divot, full of flora and fauna in various stages of
growth and decay, and reclining there in the fashion of hieroglyphics on a tablet, a great etching of human excrescence is laid. It is
one of the many secondary machines of human production, and it is
called a suburb. It is a bizarre place, fascinating in its details.
The words that are used by some people when referring to this
particular suburb are High and Lemon. Neither is appropriate. Nothing stands high from the ground, no citrus is produced there. Some
of the low standing things are called buildings. In one of those
buildings, which, as its kind are wont, refuses to stand taller than
the sick trees in front of it, a building called a house by many people,
and a home by few, are three participants in that mistaken idea
previously referred to, a family. One is a child. Another is a small
puckered woman, of more ancient extraction, wrapped in a quilted
shawl stitched together from old odd ends of tattered and anonymous shredded clothing. She is brown, with an almost greenish
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