Page 131

By Jack Joseph Smith

It dosen't really make the whores life any better. It only, maybe, makes them love you. They have only lost money and the hell continues. They are the ones who have made the sacrifice. If it wasn't for their compassion for the earth man, you would be standing there alone. In a sense, you have changed nothing through action. The meaning of your movement has been lost in a world way below the spiritual level it so strongly desires. The men cast into the street, have seen nothing. The whores continue. Where does that leave you? Where does that leave what you were trying to say? Daniel, once the gun was drawn, and the men I was with all turned their backs and walked away. Okey, so you stand alone. Where is the next place to go? Is it beyond being alone? Is it to a place where your spirit vibrates peace, even when in hell? Or is it back down into the depths of the world, until you have filled yourself with human dung? You can only fill yourself with so much, until your insides have no choice but to explode. Each time that happens, all will walk away, because nobody wants to see the shit. I went to the bar and order two more beers. The glasses were jingling and the faces were swirling in laughter and sadness. Daniel was right. There was a whole world here. How many worlds were there? How many fills could I live upon? Is that really where I was? Dancing over the darkness, but never reaching far enough in to know any one part well enough to come out. Yes, to come out. I must come out into the glory. Beyond all images. Here are the sighs of the beloved, but not the beloved. Their keeping souls have no eternal warmth. Look at that man, I thought. He is of the beloved. His face shows the agony within us all. But who will wrap their arms around his head and make him beloved to them. Who has the power to give his beloved agony a name, so that

Original Scan

Page 131

AI Interpretation

GPT

Dani tells Michael that even his brothel heroics leave the women in hell and only feed his own explosions, and the narrator, returning from the bar with more beers, suddenly begins seeing the room as a whole world full of unloved, suffering faces and a possible way out of his old self.

The rebuke lands, and the scene shifts from argument to interior turning. Barroom faces stop being backdrop and become witnesses to a change he half fears and half desires, something closer to emergence than swagger.

Claude

Daniel tells Michael that his brothel heroics do not make 'the whores life any better' and that 'you have changed nothing through action', and Michael answers that once 'the gun was drawn' the men with him 'all turned their backs and walked away'; the narrator then fetches two more beers and, among swirling faces, asks 'How many fills could I live upon?' and resolves 'I must come out into the glory'.

The rebuke about action turns into an inward search, as the bar becomes 'a whole world' of 'the sighs of the beloved, but not the beloved'. The closing questions about who will 'wrap their arms around his head' shift the page from argument toward compassion and a hunger for naming another person's agony.