Nothing I Read About Grief Seemed To

Had I Been Blessed With Even Limited Access To My Own Mind There Would Have Been No Reason To Write.

The Impulse To Write Things Down Is A Peculiarly Compulsive One, Inexplicable To Those Who Do Not Share It

I Lost The Conviction That Lights Would Always Turn Green For Me, The Pleasant Certainty That Those Rather Passive Virtues Which Had Won Me Approval As A Child Automatically Guaranteed Me Not Only Phi Beta Kappa Keys But Happiness, Honor, And The Love Of A Good Man; Lost A Certain Touching Faith In The Totem Power Of Good Manners, Clean Hair, And A Proven Competence On The Stanford-binet Scale. To Such Doubtful Amulets Had My Self-respect Been Pinned, And I Faced Myself That Day With The Non-plused Apprehension Of Someone Who Has Come Across A Vampire And Has No Crucifix At Hand.

I Recall An August Afternoon In Chicago In 1973 When I Took My Daughter, Then Seven, To See What Georgia O’keeffe Had Done With Where She Had Been. One Of The Vast O’keeffe ‘sky Above Clouds’ Canvases Floated Over The Back Stairs In The Chicago Art Institute That Day, Dominating What Seemed To Be Several Stories Of Empty Light, And My Daughter Looked At It Once, Ran To The Landing, And Kept On Looking. "who Drew It," She Whispered After A While. I Told Her. "i Need To Talk To Her," She Said Finally.

The Freeway Experience ... Is The Only Secular Communion Los Angeles Has. Mere Driving On The Freeway Is In No Way The Same As Participating In It. Anyone Can "drive" On The Freeway, And Many People With No Vocation For It Do, Hesitating Here And Resisting There, Losing The Rhythm Of The Lane Change, Thinking About Where They Came From And Where They Are Going. Actual Participation Requires Total Surrender, A Concentration So Intense As To Seem A Kind Of Narcosis, A Rapture-of-the-freeway. The Mind Goes Clean. The Rhythm Takes Over.