Now I Become Myself. It’s Taken Time,

This Suspension Of One's Own Reality, This Being Entirely Alone In A Strange City (at Times I Wondered If I Had Lost The Power Of Speech) Is An Enriching State For A Writer. Then The Written Word ... Takes On An Intensity Of Its Own. Nothing Gets Exteriorized Or Dissipated; All Is Concentrated Within.

A Garden Is Always A Series Of Losses Set Against A Few Triumphs, Like Life Itself.

If One Is The Kind Of Creature I Am And Wants To Do The Kind Of Writing I Want To Do, An Undisturbed Bourgeois Existence With No Distractions Seems In Order. A Single Meeting Outside The Family Upsets One's Whole Inner Web, Makes One Start Off On Two-days' Thinking And Weighing, Destroys A Delicate Balance Etc. Etc. ... I Now Have Enough Friends To Last Me A Lifetime And That Is Enough. I Am Going To Close The Doors And Hibernate At Least For A Couple Of Years. I Am Frightfully Depressed About My Work. It Seems To Me Perfectly Mediocre.

Inside My Mother's Death / I Lay And Could Not Breathe.

There Were Moments ... When It Seemed That All One Could Be Asked Was Just To Keep The Ashtrays Clean, The Bed Made, The Wastebaskets Emptied, As If One Never Got To The Real Things Because Of The Constant Exhausting Battle To Keep Ordinary Life From Falling Apart.