Concerto for specific idea and series of background thoughts.
1/23/94

Is it lack of love or lack of feeling
or pure exhaustion
that leaves me reeling?
(1/25/94)

How we press our hands and faces against the glass divide that separates us from this world. With laughter, with sorrow, with unending faith and learning, with acts of unimaginable devotion and cruelty, we work to wring some kind of reaction out of an essentially unreponsive universe. Well, perhaps this is unfair- the universe can be very responsive- for very brief periods of time, but soon enough it will return to its routine business of creation and destruction, not significantly influenced by my tiny contribution one way or another, again, for very long. So this longing to be so much a part of things, to join others passionately in a spirited exchange, eventually gives way to the cycle of recognizing each of our individual alonenesses. True, we celebrated our common victories and mourned together our common sufferings. Still, we had to struggle, sometimes repeatedly, to remain focused on our common interests and challenges.
*
It was hard because no sooner have we disclosed our sincerity in our determination to participate and be finally elected to the select inner circle of those who have won reknown, either permanent, or evanescent, we realized, like Aurelius, that it is all evanescent. After a quiet moment of serious reflection we usually laugh. This is, if we're lucky.
*
How good it is to stop sometimes, especially when you can remember that soon it will be followed by another beginning.
*
Then it is endings we decry! In every one of our sadnesses, we are reliving the keenest one, all of them
*
Things are neither as far, nor as close, as we think they are.
1/27/94