he talked

Can you feel the sun, Reuven? Can you feel how hot it is? Did you know Giordano Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600 for writing that the stars were suns? Did you know the gases in the interior of the sun are more than ten million degrees Kelvin? That's hot. They burned him alive because he wrote that the were suns. I wonder what it's like to be burned alive. Fire on your feet and around your legs and the pain as the fire creeps up. When do you die when you're burned alive? I think about that sometimes. They cheated Bruno. They killed him for the truth. But he didn't cheat. He wrote the truth. You have to get killed sometimes but you can't cheat. The cheating never hurts the stars but your eyes get clouded. I really believe that. Your eyes get clouded and you can't see through the telescope, any kind of telescope. There are different kinds of telescopes. Did you know that? There are refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes and there's the Schmidt telescope. I read about them in a book. Refracting telescopes are okay but you have to watch out for chromatic aberration. Reflecting telescopes don't have that problem. But they have other problems, lots of other different problems. God, listen to me talking. I can't stop talking. Why can't I stop talking? What was I saying? Problems. The Schmidt telescope has problems too. Everything has problems. There's nothing anywhere without problems. There's no one without problems. Look at the clouds. They're beautiful. God, they're beautiful. There's one that looks like someone burning. Yes. Someone is burning. Who doesn't have problems?

We sailed and he talked and then we were near the shoreline and he talked and I could make out clearly the trees and the boulders and summer homes and people on the lawns and a deer at the edge of the woods and still he talked. Then, quite suddenly, he was silent. We sailed in that silence the rest of the way to the dock.