Paths that will not open to the mind alone have been laid bare by the steady beat of trial and error. History is the travelogue of a million-odd solutions as they wander each in search of an accommodating problem. And humanity is itself a blunderous tide that mostly fails upon physical and intellectual barriers until one by one, they're worn away and gone.

I say these things because I begin to understand that no intelligence will achieve the goals I've set in this Experiment I've made of my life.

This is the reason why I plan to put my faith in the ingredients of human evolution:

1. Repetition,
   
2. with Variation,
   
3. over Time,
   
4. Trust.
   

The most important is the last. From trust comes willingness. With willingness comes the real work. And the real work that I plan to begin is for the first time in my life to write without an outline or a plan, without even an idea. All of the resources that went into these things I'll spend instead on more attempts, more stumbles, more unexpected hits: just more. I've spent years exploring what I can do by design. What I want isn't there to be found. So I intend to pass from behind the veil of what I can preconceive into the wider world of what is possible, where I hope to discover the tools I know I'll need to put my theories to the test.

It may take a year or two to hit my stride with this, since this involves a total realignment of the way I work, but the first tide is in, and I've selected the best of them and posted them below. There isn't anything in it that would seem to serve my ambition. But what is there in water that would seem to serve the breaking of a rock? Nothing, and it is inevitable, with time, that it will. So I don't know how many or how soon, but with time you'll see more of these 16-beat quads (it's what I call 'em), until I find what I've been looking for. And when I do, you'll know it.

• The Citizen
  
• The Virgin
  
• The Novel Factor
  
• The Dutiful Response