One sodden port call in Faliraki years ago, I put my finger on top of a piece of exposed rebar. “This is the most important thing in the universe!”

Pugs, my buddy, said this was stupid. And it was—a bunch of bleary nonsense.

But then again, part of me meant it. Brain full of wine, my attention had collapsed in layers until, through the periscope of inebriation, I could make out only one thing at a time.

And there was this rusty length of reinforcement bar, sticking out of the hotel roof.

Why was it there? Did this rebar, like those houses in Palestine, presage upper floors built for future generations? Or was it slipshod construction—a needless hazard waiting to maim a child?

Or did the importance of it come from being part of the great ever-moving?  Like the blades of grass upon which angels blow, or the sparrows counted by their heavenly father, was this bit of rebar a logged coordinate in God’s counted universe?

Or, more improbably yet, could this rebar matter without any explanation at all, without the actuaries of heaven, or even the brief plaudits of a drunken sailor?

//On Smallness_4//