Two weeks ago, I came out of the building, OK? I’m running across 6th Avenue– there’s a car waiting– I’ve got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport, and I’m dictating. There’s this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming. And I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic– serious traffic– speeding towards us, and I… I freeze, I-I can’t move. And I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered in some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze– a coating– and at first I thought, “My God. I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic, embryonic fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn.” But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming associate, and I’m thinking, “No, reset, this is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moments before death.” And then I realize, “No-no-no, this is completely wrong.” Because I look back at the building, and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged– not from the doors of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen– not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism who’s sole function is to excrete the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And do you know what I did? I took a deep, cleansing breath and I put that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, “As clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time.” And, Michael, the time is now.

ya