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An Instance of the Fingerprint Monday, Mar. 3, 2003 - "A dimple in the chin, a devil within." --Irish proverb "Well the obvious question then... is your chin dimpled?" Well, the simple answer is: No. But... (Have ya noticed how fond I am of "but" as a conjunction? Huh. There's a childishly crude fag joke I could make right here...) But, as I was saying... According to a cute superstition, all of us are marked with the imprint of an archangel's finger. It was Gabriel who pressed in that dimple under your nose, when he laid his finger across your lips before you born. This was after he had hung out with you for the nine months of your gestation, squeezing in your last two semesters of How To Be Human, whispering his tutelage into your evolving ears. Then, for some inestimable, inimitable, indefeasible and indefatigable seraphic reason, he sealed your lips with silence on the subject. Maybe he doesn't want us copying each other's notes... I have a mark on my left temple, shallow and faint and scar-like and coin-shaped, slightly bigger than an American quarter.* Part of the mark is hidden under my hair, and the lock of hair that grows from it is not white, or even blond, but is discernibly lighter than any other hair on my body. My Gran'ma called it "the Devil's thumbprint", especially on those occasions when I had committed some act of boyish rascality. All my elders have told me that I was born with it, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, since I have no memory of when it wasn't there. I have no qualms with thinking of it as the Devil's thumbprint, since, as an atheist, I have no qualms with the Devil. And besides, I have yet to meet a doctor who can give me a satisfactory explanation for it. ~ *Or exactly the size of the Tibetan tangka my father gave me, an inch-wide silver coin decorated with eight Buddhist and/or Hindu symbols. The Umbrella keeps away the heat of Evil, the pair of Golden Fishes symbolize the conscious being in the ocean of worldly existence, the Vase of Ambrosia is the source of all human joys and evil... the others are the Lotus, the Conch Shell, the Endless Knot, and two other symbols, I've forgotten their names and what they mean. Although I'm pretty sure the Endless Knot represents the cycle of rebirth. last eleven:
Sa r'ji�o oss�vel meninonceiv �o poshik m�'�nch uscantebatahla o�r musiu o�r muiko.
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