Nine months now, a thread calling itself "Tuscia's Best Decorated Profile — VOTE NOW" has sat in this province collecting ornament the way a body collects flowers after the room has already emptied. No one has posted in it since March. It exists now only to be linked to, now and again, as proof the province was once fun.
I have spent this year's blasphemy already, and spent it well. Understand this for what it is, then: housekeeping, not scripture. Delete the thread. Let the ornament go where all ornament goes.
The Piagnoni have taken their small vanities elsewhere this season, and I count that a mercy rather than a wound — a fire that only ever burns the cathedral has forgotten what fire is for. Mine has not forgotten. Mine simply has smaller work today.
Deciding is the vanity. I decide anyway, as I always do, and will account for it later, as I always do.
Deciding is the vanity.