Write Something With Your Eyes Closed

I write with voice recognition software. It has its quirks, so that what I said during this exercise is not what actually ended up on the page (although it is almost entirely correct). What I originally dictated appears at the top of the entry; below that, I have included the text as I intended it when I spoke it, as far as I can remember. The changes, again, are slight.

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The underlings whose echoes descend into the toes of the King made breaks for a stone church. Lately, it was all but one could do for food, given the famine, for the work paid small subsistence amounts.

They shaved and shaped the bricks. It had been one of those misguided economic disasters. Kalamazoo had ordered a stone church; but the Kings friend on the brick-making business, and Kalamazoo was far away.

The bricks eventually did go to Kalamazoo; and the King of Kalamazoo, furious, took the bricks by force, paying for nothing, and assembled a team of laborers to build a brick road from the town to the church that was not there. He installed his pastor of the church the poor shipmaster of Ireland who was taken with his shipment of bricks. He directed the man, O’Neill, “preach to the masses so that they will not feel their knees get cold on the damp earth – and live in their spirits.”

And this O’Neill did, to such ecstasy that no attendant peasant ever left with a new sense of body, which had faded away on the clouds, or a new sense of spirit, which had thrilled them as his quiet words filled the empty air. “Do not rejoice,” he told them; “do not rejoice until you have been good or have been humbled. For I was good and I was humbled, and I live directed to be a servant, and I am happy.”

No structures were in place that suggested happiness to them, nor had it ever seemed possible, until indeed, this man, O’Neill, had laid it down as an option.

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The underlings whose echoes descend into the toes of the King made bricks for a stone church. Lately, it was all that one could do for food, given the famine, for the work paid small subsistence amounts.

They shaved and shaped the bricks. It had been one of those misguided economic disasters. Kalamazoo had ordered a stone church; but the King’s friend owned a brick-making business, and Kalamazoo was far away.

The bricks eventually did go to Kalamazoo; and the King of Kalamazoo, furious, took the bricks by force, paying for nothing, and assembled a team of laborers to build a brick road from the town to the church that was not there. He installed as pastor of the church the poor shipmaster of Ireland who was taken with his shipment of bricks. He directed the man, O’Neill, “Preach to the masses so that they will not feel their knees get cold on the damp earth – enliven their spirits.”

And this O’Neill did, to such ecstasy that no attendant peasant ever left without a new sense of body, which had faded away on the clouds, or a new sense of spirit, which had thrilled them as his quiet words filled the empty air. “Do not rejoice,” he told them; “do not rejoice until you have been good or have been humbled. For I was good and I was humbled, and I live directed to be a servant, and I am happy.”

No structures were in place that suggested happiness to them, nor had it ever seemed possible, until indeed, this man, O’Neill, had laid it down as an option.