Fish and Child

Enough evolution had occurred that she could sip her water and economize at the same time. The earth was either erotic or she was. She said she wasn’t little anymore because she was the scientist of her own body, conducting enormous experiments. She no longer agreed to eat eggs. On the edge of hospitality, on the outskirts of a homogeneous neighborhood, she introduced herself to an entire school of engineers as the next ebb in the flow of a theoretical mechanics. “But you are no bigger than an elf,” they all shouted; therefore, she raised herself to her true height and countered, “How many of you have the first name Ed?” About two hundred and thirteen engineers raised their hands. It was a big effort to count them. It was here that they suffered an egregious lapse of courage: Eisenhower was no longer the head of state. “The electric empire endorses Aeschylus but there are other nameless types who are a kind of burr and will stick,” she wrote as an epigraph to her latest book.