My Love Is Like A Stone Tied

An Artist Observes, Selects, Guesses, And Synthesizes.

In Countries Where There Is A Mild Climate, Less Effort Is Expended On The Struggle With Nature And Man Is Kinder And More Gentle.

Better A Debauched Canary Than A Pious Wolf.

Why Are We Worn Out? Why Do We, Who Start Out So Passionate, Brave, Noble, Believing, Become Totally Bankrupt By The Age Of Thirty Or Thirty-five? Why Is It That One Is Extinguished By Consumption, Another Puts A Bullet In His Head, A Third Seeks Oblivion In Vodka, Cards, A Fourth, In Order To Stifle Fear And Anguish, Cynically Tramples Underfoot The Portrait Of His Pure, Beautiful Youth? Why Is It That, Once Fallen, We Do Not Try To Rise, And, Having Lost One Thing, We Do Not Seek Another? Why?

"do You Know," Ivan Bunin Recalls Anton Chekhov Saying To Him In 1899, Near The End Of His Too-short Life, "for How Many Years I Shall Be Read? Seven." "why Seven?" Bunin Asked. "well," Chekhov Answered, "seven And A Half Then."