The mature mind seems like a mature polity, it contains the history of its own particular crooked path out of original chaos and dependency. It is marked by the truth of this path but it also established and rewrites the account of the succession of inconclusive wars, the trade-offs and compromises that have brought it to its current state of balance and adequacy. A state that is both more stable and more fragile, heavier but more capable of alteration than it appears. Looking back one might count the gains and the losses, but isn't there also a point somewhere late in childhood when one is aware, looking forward, of precisely this fated double move of gain and loss. The long anticipated adult world must have appeared attractive for its freedom and autonomy, or rather its mirage of these, and for its access a vast commons, so that one couldn't wait to plunge in. At the same time one was aware of the loss of the depth of the moment-filled time of childhood, the time of thick and magical moments. The bargain was simply to surrender one for the sake of the other. And inevitably, whether we threw it down or had it torn from us we have lost our title to that thick time of childhood, which is also the essence of a certain sort of intimacy. We are reluctant exiles, this is hardly an original thought, and would do almost anything to force our way, with all our absurd apparatus, back in.