To those privileged students reading this in the cradle -- or perhaps crucible -- of L9:
Baptize yourself in the wallpaper which girdles this room, for when you listen closely you will hear the voices of nobler thoughts embedded within these stucco walls; whiff the jasmine of Tiananmen Square, let the musk of the tank overwhelm your pen and may it never stop scribbling. Unrind gall, for it congests your ears; live -- as Helene Cixous describes-- naked with defenseless eyes; moult the slough of experience and listen to your book: it shouts louder than Dad. But more importantly, listen to the intimations of the child within you, for its ears and eyes and mouth and nose and bough-like fingers have not been marred by experience. Allow that brilliance -- YOUR brilliance -- to boom from the page literally: let me taste the piquancy of your tongue.
	Words have the power to violate, injure and dehumanize; they also can tickle the body with anticipation, or daub a canvas with orange ecstasy; but most of all, they may swell com-passion, heat emanating and searching for fellow brothers and sisters.  There is no “them,” only us. If you want to learn how to use words ethically, study philosophy; if you want to learn how words affect the brain, study psychology; but if you want to be intimate with your words, inculcate a relationship with them, and thus yourself, study rhetoric. When the tree is mutilated into paper, we may sacrifice and give offering by drenching our sheets with the ambrosia of brilliant thought. Cast your sails to blank pages: a New World is to be a’found there.

Sincerely,
[my name]