This image and this black shadow thou bearest about with thee wheresoever thou goest; out of this spring many great streams of sin, and small ones also. Just as out of the image of Jesus, if it be reformed in the beams of spiritual light will spring and ascend up towards heaven burning desires, pure affections, wise thoughts and all comeliness of virtues. Even so out of this image spring stirrings of pride, of envy and such other, which cast thee down from the comeliness of a man into a beast’s likeness. (John Climacus)

Last night out of a troubled sleep I cried out, remembering a stream of sin now twenty years old. I had seen this black shadow.

The shadow has no distinct shape. It is an image of my self as seen in the mirrors of a fun house: shifting this way and then another, bloating, thinning, wierdly morphing with each step.

The shadow cannnot find - even resists - a settled form. It shapes itself to where it finds itself. It has no integrity.