I Have At Times Tried To Imagine

He Thought Of Trying To Explain Something He Had Recently Noticed About Himself: That If Anyone Insulted Him, Or One Of His Friends, He Didn't Really Mind--or Not Much, Anyway. Whereas If Anyone Insulted A Novel, A Story, A Poem That He Loved, Something Visceral And Volcanic Occurred Within Him. He Wasn't Sure What This Might Mean--except Perhaps That He Had Got Life And Art Mixed Up, Back To Front, Upside Down.

You Put Together Two People Who Have Not Been Put Together Before. Sometimes It Is Like That First Attempt To Harness A Hydrogen Balloon To A Fire Balloon: Do You Prefer Crash And Burn, Or Burn And Crash? But Sometimes It Works, And Something New Is Made, And The World Is Changed. Then, At Some Point, Sooner Or Later, For This Reason Or That, One Of Them Is Taken Away. And What Is Taken Away Is Greater Than The Sum Of What Was There. This May Not Be Mathematically Possible; But It Is Emotionally Possible.

Life Seemed Even More Of A Guessing Game Than Usual.

Some Of The Freckles I Once Loved Are Now Closer To Liver Spots. But It’s Still The Eyes We Look At, Isn’t It? That’s Where We Found The Other Person, And Find Them Still.

Reading And Life Are Not Separate But Symbiotic. And For This Serious Task Of Imaginative Discovery And Self-discovery, There Is And Remains One Perfect Symbol: The Printed Book.