I Don't Think I Would Have Been

Bookish People, Who Are Often Maladroit People, Persist In Thinking They Can Master Any Subtlety So Long As It's Been Shaped Into Acceptable Expository Prose.

It's The Arrangement Of Events Which Makes The Stories. It's Throwing Away, Compressing, Underlining. Hindsight Can Give Structure To Anything, But You Have To Be Able To See It. Breathing, Waking And Sleeping: Our Lives Are Steamed And Shaped Into Stories. Knowing That Is What Keeps Me From Going Insane, And Though I Don't Like To Admit It, Sometimes It's The Only Thing.

In A Long And Healthy Life, Which Is What Most Of Us Have, There Is Plenty Of Time.

We Are Too Kind, Too Willing--too Unwilling Too--reaching Out Blindly With A Grasping Hand But Not Knowing How To Ask For What We Don't Even Know We Want.

In One Day I Had Altered My Life; My Life, Therefore, Was Alterable. This Simple Axiom Did Not Call Out For Exegesis; No, It Entered My Bloodstream Directly, As Powerful As Heroin. I Could Feel It Pump And Surge, The Way It Brightened My Veins To A Kind Of Glass. I Had Wakened That Morning To Narrowness And Predestination And Now I Was Falling Asleep In The Storm Of My Own Free Will.