I sometimes wonder why people wear roman torture devices cast in silver around their necks. Why they protect themselves with symbols of water on their foreheads, and why they wait for hours during a smotheringly sunny day in a crowded street for the pleasure of seeing something sacred, a golden virgin that probably appears every year at the same date and time, carried by six or eight people who are also there to believe. I think of this at night lying in bed, and then, when I see unknown things in the dark I draw exes on my face and chest with my fingertips.