Blankness

'Bear with me. I know that I sometimes stray from the point, but unless I write down things as they occur to me, I feel I wil lose them for good. My mind is not quite what it used to be. It is slower now, sluggish and less nimble, and to follow even the simplest thought very far exhausts me. This is how it begins, then, in spite of my efforts. The words come only when I think I won't be able to find them out again. Each day brings the same struggle, the same blankness, the same desire to forget of ever bringing them out again....Memory is the great trap, you see, and I did my best to hold myself back, to make sure my thoughts did not sneak off to the old days. But lately I have been slipping, a little more each day it seems, and now there are times when I will not let go..."


Paul Auster
*In The Country of Last Things*
Viking, 1987
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Oblivion


"No Oblivion

Someone, I tell you,
will remember us."


Sappho
translated by Willis Barnstone
Green Integer 26
1999
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Pain

"Our hearts were filled with so much pain but this past week or so, the pain
seems to be capitulating to the point where she can pronounce..."

Nada Gordon
*V. Imp.*
Faux Press,
Cambridge, Mass 2003
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Ecstacy

"Now experiencing mounting feeling of ecstacy and anticipation; this is all
*leading somewhere*"


Gary Sullivan
*How To Proceed in the Arts*
Faux Press,, 2001
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Astonishment


There are things about reality
that continue to astonish almost everyone.

Notebook
2/24/85