You Can't Change The Past, But You

In Those Days I Had Various Strong Inclinations, For Wine, Gambling And Cockfighting, And The Society Of Gypsies, Together With A Passion For Theological Discussion Which I Had Inherited From My Father Himself-all Of Which My Father Thought I Had Better Rid Myself Of Before I Married.

I Do Not Know If You Remember The Tale Of The Girl Who Saves The Ship Under Mutiny By Sitting On The Powder Barrel With Her Lighted Torch... And All The Time Knowing That It Is Empty? This Has Seemed To Me A Charming Image Of The Women Of My Time. There They Were, Keeping The World In Order... By Sitting On The Mystery Of Life, And Knowing Themselves That There Was No Mystery.

Here And There, In Some Older Houses, Old Faded Daguerreotypes Still Hang On The Walls... They Seem To Us To Be Very Simple... Compared With The Artistic And Skillful Portraits Made In Later Days... Here Was A Photograph That At One Time Had Been The Last Word, A Very Modern Portrait... Today It Is Just A Part Of Cultural History. The Small Yellowed Surface Has Acquired Depth, An Admonishing Perspective. We Hold In Our Hand A Symbol Of The Structure And Ideology Of An Epoch.

To Me, The Explanation Of Life Seems To Be Its Melody, Its Pattern. And I Feel In Life Such An Infinite, Truly Inconceivable Fantasy.

But By The Time That I Had Nothing Left, I Myself Was The Lightest Thing Of All For Fate To Get Rid Of.