In the syntax of the real world, be killed and kill are the only language the possibilities allow. Study the news pages and see what I mean. The words seem to bend in no other direction, however hot you get them. The syntax is a mirror and when it shatters, nonexistence: annihilation by selfdenial, or you can sweep the shards into a little pile and with the greatest act of imagination imaginable, sculpt them into different shades of potential. But who does? And who says you have to speak the way you do? I'll tell you who controls me: The American Society of Newspaper Editors. They put forth the Code of Ethics and Canons of Journalism, somehow I got a copy, and I got sucked in at the age of 19, I believed what it said, long before I knew what was good for me. From that moment onward, every last reference had to be listed alphabetically in the AP Style Guide, and I accepted that fidelity to any cause but the public interest was an atrocity. This has led to a lifetime of blowing glass. Have you seen them do that? I once sat in Tacoma and watched for hours, in a kind of glaziers' theatre: a room you might sit in to watch brain surgeons at work. Every now and then, an enormous vase would break free of the blowing rod and sail to the floor, exploding like a galaxy, and out of nowhere someone would appear with the ultimate broom and collect the bits. None of those pieces, each original, unabashedly unique in all the universe, ended up in the museum outside: liberation.     e.f. / 07/02/06     for Richard Rizzi     http://snipurl.com/sm9s