Life Would Be Grand If It Weren't

She Sits In Her Usual Ample Armchair, With Piles Of Books And Unopened Magazines Around Her. She Sips Cautiously From The Mug Of Weak Herb Tea Which Is Now Her Substitute For Coffee. At One Time She Thought That She Could Not Live Without Coffee, But It Turned Out That It Is Really The Warm Large Mug She Wants In Her Hands, That Is The Aid To Thought Or Whatever It Is She Practices Through The Procession Of Hours, Or Of Days.

She Was Learning, Quite Late, What Many People Around Her Appeared To Have Known Since Childhood That Life Can Be Perfectly Satisfying Without Major Achievements.

In Dreams You Can Have The Feeling That You've Had This Dream Before, That You Have This Dream Over And Over Again, And You Know That It's Really Nothing That Simple. You Know That There's A Whole Underground System That You Call 'dreams,' Having Nothing Better To Call Them, And That This System Is Not Like Roads Or Tunnels But More Like A Live Body Network, All Coiling And Stretching, Unpredictable But Finally Familiar - Where You Are Now, Where You've Always Been.

Pots Can Show Malice, The Patterns Of Linoleum Can Leer Up At You, Treachery Is The Other Side Of Dailiness.

As Soon As A Man And Woman Of Almost Any Age Are Alone Together Within Four Walls It Is Assumed That Anything May Happen. Spontaneous Combustion, Instant Fornication, Triumph Of The Senses. What Possibilities Men And Women Must See In Each Other To Infer Such Dangers. Or, Believing In The Dangers, How Often They Must Think About The Possibilities.