IJ study archive

Joelle's walk and U.H.I.D. (p. 227)

quote

Churchill, doubtless under weighty emotional pressures during this period in history, had then proceeded to extinguish his cigar in the lady’s sherry and to place a finger-bowl napkin delicately over the ruined features of her flaming visage. The laminated non-photo U.H.I.D. membership card Joelle showed the interested old black gentleman related all this data and more in a point-size so tiny the card looked somehow both blank and defaced.

Context

The founding legend's coda: the first veil in U.H.I.D.'s history is the insulter's own napkin — concealment invented as wound-dressing, by the wounder, "delicately," as a second insult the fellowship then converts into its sacrament. And the credential that carries the story is a non-photo card whose type is too small to read: "both blank and defaced," the veil's whole paradox on laminate.

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