I Didn't Write Any Fiction Until I

I Was Fortunate That By The Time I Was Born, There Were A Lot Of Comforts And At The Same Time I Lived In A Neighborhood Where It Was Brought To My Eyes Every Single Day That People Didn't Live Like Me. Every Day I Knew That Many Of My Friends "got Relief." That Was Important In My Thinking About The World, Thinking That Not Everybody Lived That Way.

This Hill Crossed With Broken Pines And Maples Lumpy With The Burial Mounds Of Uprooted Hemlocks (hurricane Of '38) Out Of Their Rotting Hearts Generations Rise Trying Once More To Become The Forest Just Beyond Them Tall Enough To Be Called Trees In Their Youth Like Aspen A Bouquet Of Young Beech Is Gathered They Still Wear Last Summer's Leaves The Lightest Brown Almost Translucent How Their Stubbornness Has Decorated The Winter Woods.

My Language Limitations Here Are Real. My Vocabulary Is Adequate For Writing Notes And Keeping Journals But Absolutely Useless For An Active Moral Life. If I Really Knew This Language, There Would Surely Be In My Head, As There Is In Webster's Or The Dictionary Of American Slang, That Unreducible Verb Designed To Tell A Person Like Me What To Do Next.

All That Is Really Necessary For Survival Of The Fittest, It Seems, Is An Interest In Life, Good, Bad Or Peculiar.

I Don't Believe Civilization Can Do A Lot More Than Educate A Person's Senses.