When Will You Learn That There Isn't

There Are Times When The Kindness Of Strangers Only Makes Things Worse Because One Realizes How Badly One Is In Need Of Kindness And That The Only Source Is A Stranger.

Now That Mine Is Almost Over, I Can Say That The One Thing That Struck Me Most About Life Is The Capacity For Change. One Day You're A Person And The Next Day They Tell You You're A Dog. At First It's Hard To Bear, But After A While You Learn Not To Look At It As A Loss. There's Even A Moment When It Becomes Exhilarating To Realize Just How Little Needs To Stay The Same For You To Continue The Effort They Call, For Lack Of A Better Word, Being Human.

Why Does One Begin To Write? Because She Feels Misunderstood, I Guess. Because It Never Comes Out Clearly Enough When She Tries To Speak. Because She Wants To Rephrase The World, To Take It In And Give It Back Again Differently, So That Everything Is Used And Nothing Is Lost. Because It's Something To Do To Pass The Time Until She Is Old Enough To Experience The Things She Writes About.

A Couple Months After My Heart Attack, Fifty-seven Years After I'd Given It Up, I Started To Write Again. I Did It For Myself Alone, Not For Anyone Else, And That Was The Difference. It Didn't Matter If I Found The Words, And More Than That, I Knew It Would Be Impossible To Find The Right Ones.

To Touch And Feel Each Thing In The World, To Know It By Sight And By Name, And Then To Know It With Your Eyes Closed So That When Something Is Gone, It Can Be Recognized By The Shape Of Its Absence. So That You Can Continue To Possess The Lost, Because Absence Is The Only Constant Thing. Because You Can Get Free Of Everything Except The Space Where Things Have Been.