The Luxury Of Age Was The Giving

Stories Are There To Be Told, And Each Story Changes With The Telling. Time Changes Them. Logic Changes Them. Grammar Changes Them. History Changes Them. Each Story Is Shifted Side-ways By Each Day That Unfolds. Nothing Ends. The Only Thing That Matters, As Faulkner Once Put It, Is The Human Heart In Conflict With Itself. At The Heart Of All This Is The Possibility, Or Desire, To Create A Piece Of Art That Talks To The Human Instinct For Recovery And Joy.

I Told Him That I Loved Him And That I'd Always Love Him And I Felt Like A Child Who Throws A Centavo Into A Fountain And Then She Has To Tell Someone Her Most Extraordinary Wish Even Though She Knows That The Wish Should Be Kept Secret And That, In Telling It, She Is Quite Probably Losing It. He Replied That I Was Not To Worry, That The Penny Could Come Out Of The Fountain Again And Again And Again.

Sometimes Thinking Back On Things Is A Mistake Arising Out Of Pride, But I Guess You Live Inside A Moment For Years, Move With It And Feel It Grow, And It Sends Out Roots Until It Touches Everything In Sight.

I Was Fascinated By The Lack Of A Word For A Parent Who Has Lost A Child. We Have No Word In English. I Thought For Sure There'd Be A Word In Irish But There Is None. And Then I Looked In Several Other Languages And Could Not Find One, Until I Found The Word Sh'khol In Hebrew. I'm Still Not Sure Why So Many Languages Don't Have A Word For This Sort Of Bereavement, This Shadowing.

There Are Fewer And Fewer Jews In Ireland, But We Still Have One Of The Most Famous Jewish Characters In Literary History, Of Course, In Leopold Bloom.