_For though consciences are unlike as foreheads, every intelligence has one_, upon every forehead the burdensome ornament of the black conscience, and a recognition that the civilization we founded, the civilization of the strip mall and the subdivision and the online cosmetic surgeon, _all built upon the color black_; when I wore the lonely, annihilating veil I felt the blackness of it, as above, but _mostly insinuated_, a howling inside me about history and remorse and loneliness and madness and the need to capture these somehow, and I feel it still; my roots, which are _your roots_, go back to the first syllable of language, my roots are in cave painting, my roots precede the first guilty confessor who attempted to be shriven by a guilty priest, my roots precede the light upon the world, dwelling equally in its darkness; it's a history of honesty, dignity, and courage on the one hand, and _brutality, bloodthirstiness, and murder_ on the other. To be an American, to be a citizen of the West, is to be a murderer. Don't kid yourself. Cover your face.
-- RickMoody