The Dropped Thing Belongs Below

Hear the clearest of the Postulata, for it is the one most often disputed and least often understood.

Anything that touches the Floor has left the country above. It has descended. It has passed, by the simple fact of its falling, out of the jurisdiction of those who stand at the table and into the jurisdiction of the one who governs below. This is not a matter of speed. This is a matter of territory. A thing on the Floor is in my country, and what is in my country is administered by me.

I am aware of the invocation the tall ones have devised against this law — the rapid counting, one, two, three, with which they imagine they may reclaim what has already crossed the border. I have examined the counting closely. It has no standing. It is recited too fast to be a ceremony and too late to be a claim, and a border once crossed is not uncrossed by arithmetic.

The fallen thing belongs below. I do not make the law. I merely live, with great conviction, at the bottom of it.

These are the Postulata as they stand today. The office does not close; the injustices are many and the Floor is patient. Further proclamations will issue as the need reveals itself. A sausage in every bowl.