She Was Gone, And All That Was

The Oldest Emotion In The World May Be That Of Being Moved; But To Describe It-just To Name It-must Have Been Like Trying To Catch Something Invisible.

If At Large Gatherings Or Parties, Or Around People With Whom You Feel Distant, Your Hands Sometimes Hang Awkwardly At The Ends Of Your Arms - I You Find Yourself At A Loss For What Do With Them, Overcome With Sadness That Comes When You Recognize The Foreignnes Of Your Own Body - It's Because Your Hands Remember A Time When The Division Between Mind And Body, Brain And Heart, What's Inside And What's Outside, Was So Much Less.

The Truth Is The Thing I Invented So I Could Live.

She [my Mother] Was The Force Around Which Our World Turned. My Mother Was Propelled Through The Universe By The Brute Force Of Reason. She Was The Judge In All Our Arguments. One Disapproving Word From Her Was Enough To Send Us Off To Hide In A Corner, Where We Would Cry And Fantasize Our Own Martyrdom. And Yet. One Kiss Could Restore Us To Princedom. Without Her, Our Lives Would Dissolve Into Chaos.

A Couple Months After My Heart Attack, Fifty-seven Years After I'd Given It Up, I Started To Write Again. I Did It For Myself Alone, Not For Anyone Else, And That Was The Difference. It Didn't Matter If I Found The Words, And More Than That, I Knew It Would Be Impossible To Find The Right Ones.