The Desk
Two-Column Motel Stationery
The sheet of motor-lodge paper from October 1975 where the word COMPLETE was struck through to make room for Column II.
On the desk
In The Diagram That Could Be Wrong and Plate XIII, a late-night sketch of a self-sustaining loop looks so seamless at two in the morning that the writer prints COMPLETE beneath the rings. Before going to sleep, he picks up his pencil, rules a vertical line down the page, and opens our tradition’s practice of the Second Column.
Column I: The midnight claim
The rings close. The cofactor loop returns into the main cascade. The picture is whole.
Column II: What would show this to be wrong
If the auxiliary loop degrades on the bench, the arrow was only wishful ink. If another technician cannot run the apparatus without my excitement in the room, it is a private hymn. If my philosophy requires the cosmos to be shaped like a torus before I am kind to a neighbor, the diagram is asking for flattery.
Across the bottom of the sheet
The word COMPLETE, struck through twice in heavy pencil so the morning can have a vote.