Do you mind if I tell you about the day I had an idea for a novel?

But before I tell you that, I need to tell you a story about the Shroud of Turin.

In the 15th century, as it happens, a scrap of molten silver landed on the Shroud of Turin and ignited. A host of nuns dowsed it in water, rushing to put it out, but even though most of the Shroud was saved, the fire charred the edges, and because the shroud was folded, the flames burned symmetrical patterns around the image of Jesus.

A few years ago, the artist Jeffrey Valance flew to Italy to study the Shroud of Turin. The Catholic Church granted Mr. Valance six months to study it.

He couldn’t stop looking at the fire-damaged areas. The patterns entranced him. He saw faces–clown faces. (Look online at the Shroud yourself. Those faces really do leer from the charcoaled, Rorschach edges.) After his six months were up, he flew back to L.A. and painted the Clowns of the Shroud of Turin and showed them. The Catholic Church was outraged. Since medieval times, the Church considered clowns to be demonic. Evil. How could Mr. Valance put clowns on the fabric that cradled the body of their lord and savior? So they put him on the Catholic watch list, a kind of enemies list.

Mr. Valance wrote them. He said: I did not put the clowns on the Shroud of Turin. Think about this logically. Who, in the whole of creation, would most like to burn an artifact of Jesus? The Devil. So the Devil must have sent his hellfire to destroy the Shroud in the 15th century. When the nuns thwarted him, the Devil scorched his image into the Shroud as a final effort to deface it. I did not put clowns on the Shroud of Turin, the Devil did. I only found them.

The Catholic Church was contrite. Of course, they said, that makes complete sense, and took Mr. Valance off their list.

I was walking one morning, sweating in the sun, when I had an idea: I should write a novel about the Shroud of Turin’s caretaker in the 15th century, an Italian monk. In my novel, the clowns will talk to him, tempt him, drive him crazy and make him doubt. Whether the Devil really speaks through the clowns, or if the whole thing is in the monk’s imagination I’ll leave unclear. The philosophy of Kierkegaard will drive the monk’s actions, motivate him. The decision to join a monastery, after all, is an intensely religious choice, a commitment to a life devoted to God and his teachings. The clowns will tempt the monk with the philosophy of Nietzsche, with his claim that religion is fascist, with his attack on God. Nietzsche was an isolated person, so the clowns will isolate the monk–and make him strange. The clowns should be alluring and intelligent.

I thought these things–and I tell you about this day because no one else will listen. Walking my neighborhood street, I thought these things, when a screaming came around the corner.

A truck zeroed in on me, its dented body flitting up and down on thick coils of suspension –a butterfly trapped in a jar fluttering for oxygen or a breeze. The body found its center, adjusted to the abrupt switch of momentum and squatted back on its hind wheels. It kicked forward –the butterfly squeezing against the cold wall of the jar and darting for the glass across, either to pierce through or pulp its head into crunchy exoskeleton and juices.

I kept walking forward. I did not step aside.

The truck blipped its horn. As it zoomed closer the blips came rabid, filled out, and merged into one solid blare which dopplered high in pitch.

My head sagged.

On these morning walks, I usually begin in vigor, head held up, back straight, arms swinging one two, full of purpose, like a chubby kid looking to lose his belly fat. This morning I ambled. My chin bobbled to my chest and I noticed the intricate shadows cast in the leaves, twigs and branches that blocked the sun overhead. The shadows lifted off the asphalt. Thick and slender, they stuck to my eyes, and the light shafted through a few bright openings framed by black negatives of leaves and branches.

I heard a T.V. through an open window, a woodpecker pecking at a telephone pole, kids splashing in a pool, steady steps. Swallowed into the background heat, they grayed away: the T.V. and kids, the static of drumsticks on a high hat, the woodpecking a hollow tom and my feet the resonate pluck of a twisted cord of a base.

I was itching.

I was hungry.

I was lonely.

No matter, I told myself. Keep my boxers riding up my thighs, keep the chafing, keep the sweat, keep the itching. Body, you can have them.

Draped on my eyes, the twig and branch shadows tilted. They penetrated my skull. Humming in my brain, like squid-ink in ocean, the shadows bloomed into twisting shrubs. Electric impulses no longer shot through my muscles and fibers, but scampered along the leafy twists and tangles, the hairpin turns of the mental shadows. They zipped to dark clusters; the shocks burst ideas: a silversmith pounding a candelabrum with a hammer, the fire in the furnace behind rushing the high vaulted cellar, a pill of silver sailing away from the collision of hammer and anvil into the dark, nestling in a fold of a shroud. It smoldered and ignited.

Another illuminated clowns on a cloth: sentinels mocking the layered hands and modest frame of Jesus Christ. Another illuminated thoughts of research: the history of the Catholic Church, Italian churches during the 15th century, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Another bloomed breakfast: oatmeal and dates.

The truck shone heat. It looked massive. Done scampering in the shadows, the electric impulses coalesced into a thick paste, sparks dampened. They were trapped, so how could I step aside? But the truck swerved leftwise, tilting and sinking low on its suspension. It skidded. Thrash Metal, and the door opened.

Pale arms slung out, flexed and stretched; their hands popped into fists. A leg hooked out of the door, and onto the side of the seat the other leg swung. The Thrash Metal blew away. Hands fingered jeans. The limbs tensed (a final jolt to clear away a dream) and bounced out the red door, stringing a body behind them.

“You goddamn [something or other]!” he said.

The words drifted like soot sloughed on the air.

“Do you want to get some breakfast?” I said.

He walked and flung his arms around his head in sweeps. His chin waggled, and his feet slipped over the asphalt.

“What in hell [blah blah blah blah blah]!” he said.

“I’ve got a great idea for a novel. I really want to talk to you about it. But first, let’s get a bear claw or something.”

He said, “Fuck you [gobbledygook or something of the kind]!”

We could be sitting in a cafe sharing an apricot tart, I thought.

I told him, “Kierkegaard and Nietzsche go great with coffee and breakfast.”

His nose was close, his skin grey and suggestive. He palmed my ears and blasted my head with a pop. Under water jackhammers pounded. My eyes watered as his eyes bulged with the barbed wire fence enclosing Dachau, thin plowed dirt, gravel ringing brick and wood warehouses, stinking with bodies, thin as matches on the floor, as grey and white as the soot on the walls and the fire burning their heads, ribs, eye-sockets, and hips. It crackled down my leg and tensed. My underwear chevroned apart my thighs. Rocks, stuck firm, pressed my belly. The wind rustled leaves. A kid screamed and splashed in a pool. A woodpecker pecked. A butterfly fluttered. A clown laughed. With a sleeve I wiped the red crisscrosses from my eyes, curled a knee, rolled sideways away from the pain in my rib, shook my head, bent slow at my hip, and stood to see the truck screaming red around the corner.