More and more, this is starting the feel like T.S Elliot's The Waste Land, to me. Everything feels dry and hollow. The present tense is haunting and uncertain, it takes away our certainty of closure because in the present tense, the future is unknown. The narrator is not omniscient, so we can't rely on the past either. It gives me shivers just to read it. Add to that smiles without contact, and a name without an identity - even more, words without communication, and you are left with 'fear in a handful of dust'. *Shudders*. I'm thinking that the only way Clark can be 'reborn' is for there the be a violent storm, to tear down the debris and clear the air. And I suspect that Lois lane is going to be the one to provoke it
