Granted, on initial inspection a tangerine appears to possess many of the qualities of nothingness-- certainly enough to fool the lay person. Following a more delicate inspection, however, the careful observer will discover that the tangerine, in fact, is. It is a "physical object", to coin a phrase. The traits of the

tangerine, which our observer experienced as being essentially nothing, are now seen to flow, paradoxically, from its very "presence". Some readers may be incredulous at first, shocked at the use of such words by a man of my stature and scruples. I can only reply by asking, how many of you have actually experienced a tangerine? Before you take issue with my admittedly

controversial statement, you must cast out the years of ephemerality and intravenous midnights under which you have labored; you must question the old party line, the gelatinous dogma of yesteryear. History is a conspiracy fomented by alchemists and archbishops. Find yourself a tangerine, "see" it, "touch" it, "smell" it, then tell me how your lofty nonexistence deals with such visicitudes.

Nothingness, I say, exists solely in the mind of the beholder. Our psyche labor under the illusion of nothingness to protect us from the cruel fact that the universe is composed almost entirely of substance! The great grey silence of the vacuum conceals a foaming sea of mass. Only with a great deal of effort and, above all, clear minds can we hope to tear through this veil,

say goodbye to the diaspora within us, and drink deep the rocks below our feet. The shock of the familiar as seen from behind is the greatest shock of all. I do not ask that you unclasp all vagaries at once; for now the preliminary experiment is presented to you--sink smoothly into the golden citric flesh and breathe in the heady vapors of being.