Distortions of Renaissance Pragmatism

The world must be peopled,
Says Benedick (to himself)
Before Beatrice enters
(Act II, Scene iii).

And so I do -- without much
ado. Except, I don't
people it with people,
really. A friend called it

Slavic animism once
(it was the summer of
bare feet, long words
and short nights).

What it is, actually,
is an exercise in
exploding loneliness
into a population of animas,

protective and personalized,
sending signals and
reasserting the rightness
of this moment in this

your life, reflecting
your defragmented
you, showing it
in the light.

A comforting mirage
of external meaning
revealed in the
quotidian to the observant --


this is certainly
not what Benedick
had in mind when he
set to people the world


with Beatrice. Too
metaphysical, that.
And, ultimately,
profoundly lonely.