99. A HOLIDAY OF TWO MEANS

A HOLIDAY OF TWO MEANS
I am taking a holiday until tomorrow, because I don't
know what else to do. Having run out of words (me!) and
intentions, I seek to step back, inhabit the distance, and
take the moment I've waited for. My lethal fragment
of effort and attempt is over. I will sit at the counter
forever, just to watch what I am watching.
-
The scribe is a nasty nurse.
He takes his paper and pen with him,
through all the ages. We have seen him
in every guise : Pound and Rilke, Dante and
Chaucer, Sartre and Gide. Whatever your combination,
it has already happened. You should arise early to
know so much. Mankind's workings are never lost.
-
There is, in the shadows, a dark kind of optimism
to all that we do. Post-pessimism, pre-Paradise;
perhaps it's all the same in the end.
To laugh, one must be willing to cry.
To die, one must first have lived.
-
'Bread baked on its own bottom is best' -
the old monk in the garrett told me that.