I Don't See Novels Ending With Any

A Man In A Desert Can Hold Absence In His Cupped Hands Knowing It Is Something More Than Water. There Is A Plant Whose Heart, If One Cuts It Out Is Replaced With Fluid Containing Herbal Goodness. Every Morning One Can Drink The Liquid Amount Of The Missing Heart.

There Is The Hidden Presence Of Others In Us, Even Those We Have Known Briefly. We Contain Them For The Rest Of Our Lives, At Every Border That We Cross.

We Die Containing A Richness Of Lovers And Tribes, Tastes We Have Swallowed, Bodies We Have Plunged Into And Swum Up As If Rivers Of Wisdom, Characters We Have Climbed Into As If Trees, Fears We Have Hidden In As If Caves. I Wish For All This To Be Marked On By Body When I Am Dead. I Believe In Such Cartography - To Be Marked By Nature, Not Just To Label Ourselves On A Map Like The Names Of Rich Men And Women On Buildings. We Are Communal Histories, Communal Books. We Are Not Owned Or Monogamous In Our Taste Or Experience.

That's One Of The Great Sadnesses Of Any Life - Knowing What You Know Now And Then Remembering What You Did Not Know Then.

You Must Talk To Me, Caravaggio. Or Am I Just A Book? Something To Be Read, Some Creature To Be Tempted Out Of A Loch And Shot Full Of Morphine, Full Of Corridors, Lies, Loose Vegetation, Pockets Of Stones.