[to Be An Artist,] This Desire To

I Wept When The Muse Ulla Bent Over Me. Blinded By Tears I Could Not Prevent Her From Kissing Me, I Could Not Prevent The Muse From Giving Me That Terrible Kiss. All Of You Who Have Ever Been Kissed By The Muse Will Surely Understand That Oskar, Once Branded By That Kiss, Was Condemned To Take Back The Drum He Had Rejected Years Before, The Drum He Had Buried In The Sand Of Sapse Cemetery.

I Shall Speak Of How Melancholy And Utopia Preclude One Another. How They Fertilize One Another... Of The Revulsion That Follows One Insight And Precedes The Next... Of Superabundance And Surfeit. Of Stasis In Progress. And Of Myself, For Whom Melancholy And Utopia Are Heads And Tails Of The Same Coin.

What Does A River Like The Vistula Carry Away With It? Everything That Goes To Pieces: Wood, Glass, Pencils, Pacts ... Chairs, Bones, And Sunsets Too. What Had Long Been Forgotten Rose To Memory, Floating On Its Back Or Stomach, With The Help Of The Vistula.

In Statistics, What Disappears Behind Rows Of Numbers Is Death.

Writers Know That Sometimes Things Are There In The Drawer For Decades Before They Finally Come Out And You Are Capable Of Writing About Them.