When I stare at Rodney, trapped in his ice palace as if the sea had frozen unexpectedly around him, enveloping his small life in a hard vitric globe like the hazy, hyalescent vision of a gypsy's magic ball, I feel my heart burst into tears, hoping that somehow the warmth of this lachrymal flood will dissolve Rodney's prison. Buried alive, Rodney will never again know the gradual unfolding of events, the sequential expectation generated when one is accustomed to watching one thing follow another. Time for this hermit crab is a static dimension from which there is no possible escape or change - only a resigned abeyance, a complete surrender to a single, infinite moment that he occupies entirely alone.

Rodney's is the tempo of things that remain in a deep slumber until they are discovered anew, brought back to life in the glorious intensity of amazement, an experience where objects and events are able to flourish again, Sleeping Beauties whose radiant youth has only been enhanced by the long period during which they remained latent.

Unwilling to let go of the reverie, I press my face against the transparent bubble that holds him, hoping this gesture will bring him a little closer for a few more seconds. But I have returned from my musing and the spell is broken. Somewhere outside, a child's cry and its mother's gentle prodding remind me that I am on a rented bed in an unfamiliar city, thousands of miles from home and even farther from the small girl who, for a moment there, returned to existence in the evanescent life of daydreams.