Excerpt:

I should apologize. Last night, I wrote in a drunken fury after a series of strange events. I must have said many incoherent and even mean-spirited things, many of which are simply untrue. I’ll be honest, there is a spiteful side to me. There is a spiteful and vengeful side, and a rebellious side, and a meanstreak in me. There is goodness in my heart yet and I will prove it to you. One thing is certain, and I still stand by this, it is that I have nothing to hide. Certainly not my personal relationships, as I know very few individuals. And certainly not my findings, many of which are rather dull, and some of which are highly technical. You will have to employ many scientists of your own to decipher some of the findings which I will reveal here. But I can see no reason why any of the findings, though some of them are breakthroughs in the small incestuous circles where I circle, would be of any value to you, or that any of them should raise the ire of a government official’s blood. Let me be honest. You are not the bad guys. We all know who the bad guys are, but you are not them. I am even beginning to learn some of your names. The gentleman who brought me here had a deep heavy voice, his name was Mr. Meadows, and large hands. I still remember those large hands grabbing me, firm, yes I shall say it, but also without any sinister motives. “A firm grasp is a sign of a gentleman,” I said that in my first book Particular and Personal Scientific Advances (now sadly out of print). In it, I laid out the fundamentals of my research, many of which are fine points I have continued to hone for the past 25 years since that publication. I will describe them all to you in due time. As I was saying, he had a firm grasp and a large hand. I still remember those hands, now, loosening the teeth of those handcuffs. His warm voice, I am beginning to like him, saying “Don’t worry, this is just a formality, Mr... uhh..” I had to remind him my name. That was the level of his remove from these proceedings. I really don’t blame him, probably just a man making ends meet. By the way, I like the uniforms in here. Very thoughtful, you can really tell someone really gave time to the details. I really like the orange accents. Only wish there were some windows in my cell, so that I can at least tell the time of day. My biological clock is quite wrecked right now. Is it still Wednesday? I haven’t a clue. Perhaps that would be my one request. It is very important that I keep the days straight, as my research is deeply entrenched in and dependent on concepts of time. Nothing crazy, mind you. But it would be nice to know the general developments of the day, and to keep up with the dilly dally of my profession. Perhaps a few scientific journals to keep me up to date. Mr. Meadows, bless his heart, who handed me off to a taller man, with a soft voice. This was in fine company, might I say the lighting was dark? I hope you won’t take offense. The taller man, I think he was interested in my case, who was introduced to me in the darkroom. I never shook his hand, instead he stood very far from me. Distance is also a forte. Something I have much to say about. People have a personal relationship with distances. This taller gentleman, who ordered two other gentleman to take me to a room, much brighter. It was a room that, if you were a student studying in Lisbon who had just arrived with his stacks of papers and a locket of your girlfriend’s hair, you might find endearing in some ways. And if not, then at least it was a room fit for a professional man, one without many wanderings of the mind, who wanted only to concentrate on his task, and to be woken up daily by a nursemaid. And if not that, then you can say it was a room, at least given the height of the ceilings and the color of the door, that was suitable to be a kind of mail room, that I could imagine about twenty or thirty clerks regularly circulating in, stamping strange symbols onto envelopes, and doing a lot of re-licking, for certainly some envelopes have come loose in the humidity. I only describe this room this thoroughly for I have been staying in it for a few days now (or only a few hours? I have no way of knowing for sure) and suspect I will remain in here for quite some time yet. Getting to the room presented many interesting conundrums. First there was the really long hallway. This hallway went around in a very large circle, forming a ring around the outer edges of the building. Might I suggest some plants. Often when there is no visible marker, no human touch, it is hard to remember which door is which. Three times I was led into the wrong room. One looked like a baby room. Certainly not a room worthy of a man of my stature. One led down another, narrower hallway, which I didn’t appreciate. Then there were the stairs. The stairs were a problem, but only a technical one. Nevertheless, I arrived. Everything was eventually explained to me. I was to remain alone, to continue writing down my findings, as I would at home. I was also to write down anything I recalled that would be interesting or relevant. The man who explained this to me, the “explainer”, I might call him for the moment, was very shall I say interesting. He was mousey, and very nervous around people. I’m a little surprised you chose him to be the “ambassador” so to speak to your newly initiated members. I would assume there is only good reason. Perhaps he is a man of great standing among your institution. One who has broken through to a lot of unwilling souls through sheer willpower and a touch of the uncomfortable awkward silences that make learned men squirm. Unfortunately, these had no effects on me, as I am a very antisocial man to begin with. What happened next was interested. The woman who came in afterwards, an older woman, but still very fine in features. She had the kind of beauty that reminded me of Griselda, the best kind of beauty. The beauty that had potential. This is the type that might I say isn’t the most beautiful, although still beautiful, but gave a hint of a past or future beauty that promised much more. This woman, shall I call her the Grande Beauty, had the type of beauty that, once one came into contact with, struck one as a reflection of a much greater beauty in years past. This is not to say that she was not beautiful, for if I had come upon her in any single setting of my life, there would have been no doubt in my mind that her image would have been in grained into my very own scientific findings. Yet, still, her beauty held so much potential, hinted at a greater beauty hiding behind it, of a younger even more fruitful woman. For every beautiful eyelash there was a potentially even beautifuller eyelash that was summoned up in the viewers mind. For every earlobe, a beautifuller earlobe. For every soft bossom, a beautifuller bossom shadowed it. It was as if meeting this woman, you were also meeting her more beautiful twin. For every leg, she had another leg, more beautiful. And as for legs, she had two to begin with, so this made four. For every strand of long red hair, she had another shadow strand in waiting. For every perfectly shaped hand, there was a more perfect one hidden in the pockets of reason. For every buttock, well shaped and firm, was a reminder of another buttock. The image of this more perfect beauty was well enough swishing in my brain, but I did not need to see her. For a beauty that perfect, manifested in physical form can only disappoint. It was enough to be hinted at, to see the imperfect Grande Beauty in this physical form only made her more perfect. This I do not exaggerate, for she was a Grande Beauty. And so is Griselda, though in a different way. When I first met Griselda, she was a young chick. I had been interviewing for a research assistant for several weeks at the time, never being totally satisfied with any of the applicants that showed up. Griselda was late for the appointment, and I had already moved on to other things. I had started to feed Wendell, even giving him some of my sandwich that I decided against. I really shouldn’t buy that fake mayo anymore. Anyway, my mind had moved on to other things. For instance, there was this crossword puzzle, and I had just finished it. Solved it. I thought I was set, but low and behold. I glanced at it one last time as I was putting my sandwich on the cold bathroom floor, Wendell’s tail wagging now like no business, and that one word, that one word was wrong. The word was “daisy”, I still remember it now. It was completely the wrong word, and I could still see it now, as that word is the foundation for all the other words building upon it. As that word’s credibility faded, so too did the other words. I erased “daisy” in my mind, and slowly the rest of the puzzle erased itself in my mind as well. It was like watching a finely knit sweater, one that Griselda herself had knitted, being un-knit through no fault of her own. By the mere folly of my old age, perhaps, or by some unknown coincidence that convinces one that one has the right answer to begin with, for “daisy” was one of the first words I put down into that puzzle, but in actuality it was a coincidence working from many directions to decieve. It was a bloody trap, one that I should have seen coming long before I had stepped into it, like the dullard I am. It was 10:03 a.m. when this happened, when I realized I had stepped into this trap (these times have greater significance later, as I said before, the concept of time is tightly interwoven into all my theories), which is also the exact moment when Griselda arrived. What could have conspired for those two events to happen in the same minute? For the crossword puzzle to unravel and for Griselda to show up at my very own footmat, half an hour late, 33 minutes, to be exact? What could have aligned it all? I will explain later, and surely Griselda deserves much more attention than any of my scientific findings, and of course, to write about Griselda, I must also write about Patrice, for Griselda was just a mask for Patrice, who is the real heart of Griselda. But I will get to that later. Right now, my lunch has arrived in a slot, the one that is so perfectly shaped it reminds me of my very own mailslot in which I have recieved many fine items. Gifts, many from other scientists, some have been tricks, mind you, yes. But this lunch here looks rather delicious. Chicken pot pie! Who would have thought of such pleasures in this institution?