The Mountains of Instead

      AN IMAGINARY ENTITY OF ENORMOUS POWER       1. Panis Angelicus   I was about eleven years old when I made my First Communion in St. Joseph’s Church in Brattleboro Vermont.   Unlike Napoleon, who claimed that his First Communion was the happiest day of his life, for then he was brought nearest to God, I hadn’t yet felt close to God except when instructed to be by my teachers, who were nuns, as Napoleon’s may have been as well.   What I remember of the day was the marvelous white suit I had been provided, made from a cloth unknown to me then – it might have been satin or silk or some lesser material infused with those (shantung?), but it could have been seen, or sensed, to be a metaphor, or rather a metonymy ,   a thing that is “put for” another thing --   in this case, for the inner purity that I acknowledged but really could only give the credit to the suit for. I had also wished for another upgrade of my small self on that day: a hat.   A real man’s hat, like my dad’