Nostalgia, The Vice Of The Aged.

Fine Art, That Exists For Itself Alone, Is Art In A Final State Of Impotence. If Nobody, Including The Artist, Acknowledges Art As A Means Of Knowing The World, Then Art Is Relegated To A Kind Of Rumpus Room Of The Mind And The Irresponsibility Of The Artist And The Irrelevance Of Art To Actual Living Becomes Part And Parcel Of The Practice Of Art.

Spindly Branches Of Buttercups Were Secreted Among Gleaming Stems Still Moist At The Roots From Last Night's Rain That Had Washedand Refreshed The Entire Wood, Had Dowered It In Poignant Transparency, The Unique, Inconsolable Quality Of Rainy Countries, As If All Was Glimpsed Through Tears.

Cats Of All Kinds Weave In And Out Of The Text; Burroughs Has Clearly Taken To Them In A Big Way In His Old Age And Seems Torn Between A Fear They Will Betray Him Into Sentimentality And A Resigned Acceptance That A Man Can't Be Ironic All The Time.

For All Cats Have This Particularity, Each And Every One, From The Meanest Alley Sneaker To The Proudest, Whitest She That Ever Graced A Pontiff's Pillow — We Have Our Smiles, As It Were, Painted On. Those Small, Cool, Quite Mona Lisa Smiles That Smile We Must, No Matter Whether It's Been Fun Or It's Been Not. So All Cats Have A Politician's Air; We Smile And Smile And So They Think We're Villains

The Wolf Is Carnivore Incarnate And He's As Cunning As He Is Ferocious; Once He's Had A Taste Of Flesh Then Nothing Else Will Do.