I Doubt If One Ever Accepts A

A Few Times In My Life I've Had Moments Of Absolute Clarity, When For A Few Brief Seconds The Silence Drowns Out The Noise And I Can Feel Rather Than Think, And Things Seem So Sharp. And The World Seems So Fresh As Though It Had All Just Come Into Existence. I Can Never Make These Moments Last. I Cling To Them, But Like Everything, They Fade. I Have Lived My Life On These Moments. They Pull Me Back To The Present, And I Realize That Everything Is Exactly The Way It Was Meant To Be.

I Am A Camera With Its Shutter Open, Quite Passive, Recording, Not Thinking.

At One Campus Where I Was Lecturing, I Asked A Friend, "how Many Of My Colleagues Know I'm Gay?" He Answered, "all Of Them." I Wasn't Surprised. But, Just The Same, It Was Kind Of Spooky, Because Not One Of Them Had Ever Given Me The Faintest Sign That He Or She Knew. If I Had Spoken About It Myself, Most Of Them Would Have Felt It Was In Bad Taste.

The More I Think About Myself, The More I'm Persuaded That, As A Person, I Really Don't Exist. That Is One Of The Reasons Why I Can't Believe In Any Orthodox Religion: I Cannot Believe In My Own Soul. No, I Am A Chemical Compound, Conditioned By Environment And Education. My "character" Is Simply A Repertoire Of Acquired Tricks, My Conversation A Repertoire Of Adaptations And Echoes, My "feelings" Are Dictated By Purely Physical, External Stimuli.

Hollywood's Two Polar Types Are The Cynically Drunken Writer Aggressively Nursing A Ten-year-old Reputation And The Theatrically Self-conscious Hermit Who Strides The Boulevard In Sandals, Home-made Shorts And A Prophetic Beard, Muttering Against The Age Of The Machines.