I mailed some photographs of Adagio to Peggy and her gang. Sort of appearance only. Decided it was best to keep up their interest in him. Promised that someday they would not only see him but keep him for a while. Don't know why -- True, I don't like them despite that they are his his godparents and all--but sometimes the idea of a hiatus from this Mommy game is a bit tempting. I could dump him on them. Antarctica -- Antarctica. It's still in my dreams --" "What about me? Willya' take me with you when you go off to the seventh continent?" The voice was that of Smokey-The-Bear in the "Don't start forest fires" advertisements. "Up here, youn' lady." She looked on the shelf. "Well, fuck. You're not Smokey at all." "No, youn' lady, I'm not. He's just a distant cousin." Gabriele looked at the foot long stuffed polar bear sitting on a man's handkerchief on a shelf above the dresser. She had bought him one time when she went to Buffalo, New York. "Poor Gabey, nobody loves ya' 'cause ya' don't love 'em. Going to restaurants all alone isn't no fun. Parks alone, waterfalls and painting with your paint brush, even fornicating alone. Even when you are with people you are separate. Poor Gabey." Suddenly the polar bear began to change into the higher authority. "Gabriele, it is me" said the higher authority. " Look at yourself, held together by the stitching of hate-the plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms that the factory of the human race mutantly created -- it will be you who shall feel the walls of artificial fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling out. For a little beer on top of four joints makes a person see the unsealed human fragments that had been smoothed over in time. Come on Gabriele, the gal who still chews tobacco and spits it into an empty beer can...the gal with the deep dark-ocean eyes...the gal bereft of what the normal means, grip that other beer bottle now. Together with the joints, this is the only medicine devised to rebreak the strangely concocted pieces that have been glued into the broken you. Drink and smoke! Become fragmented again with the hope that you will heal and be normal. A 17 year old girl goes to eat a meal in her boyfriend's home and a wife to her in-laws. How is it that such simple pleasures continually elude you? How is it that you have made such cynical and erroneous views of the world?" No sooner had her higher authority spoken then Gabriele heard a skid of a fast moving car suddenly stop and a child scream. The polar bear and the handkerchief with the initials embroidered on it tumbled from the shelf. Gabriele quickly stabbed the marijuana to its ashtray of death and flew out the door.