1/23/94

Concerto for specific idea and
series of background thoughts.

1.

1/25/94 (12:05 a.m.)

Is it lack of love or lack of feeling
or pure exhaustion
that leaves me reeling?

1/27/94

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 or cruelty
we work to wring some kind of
reaction out of an essentially
unresponsive 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 with 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
focussed on our common interests
and challenges.

*

It was hard because
no sooner have we declared
our sincerity in our
determination to participate
and be finally elected to the
select circle of those who have
won renown, either permanent or
evanescent, we realized,
like Aurelius, that it is all
evenescent. After
a quiet moment of serious
reflection we usually laugh. That
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 rehearsing the keenest one,
reliving all of them.

*

Things are neither as far, nor as
close, as we think they are.