~ after Remedios Varo That's how I feel too, about the useless- ness sometimes of science; though not about alchemy, because clearly, there's something else that's made it possible for the checkered floorboard to rise up and offer itself like a blanket for the woman bent at her task, spinning. How long has she sat there in the broody foyer, while gears and pulleys decant energy into a cone at the end of a pendulum? The houses of progress and industry stand in the rust- colored mist like abandoned factories. As always, they were built to look like monuments—but the only labor here is fed by her hand. With that kind of devotion, she ought to be crowned with laurels, rewarded with longed-for rest. But as alchemist she can't stop now. What if the wind blowing the weather vane stopped too; what if the light faded, what if the velvet curtains descended, and the only remaining sounds were made by robots and artificial sheep?