Let Me Tell You One

We Are Repeatedly Left, In Other Words, With No Further Focus Than Ourselves, A Source From Which Self-pity Naturally Flows. Each Time This Happens I Am Struck Again By The Permanent Impassibility Of The Divide. Some People Who Have Lost A Husband Or A Wife Report Feeling That Person's Presence, Receiving That Person's Advice. Some Report Actual Sightings, What Freud Described In "mourning And Melancholia" As "a Clinging To The Object Through The Medium Of A Hallucinatory Wishful Psychosis." Others Describe Not A Visible Apparition But Just A "very Strongly Felt Presence."

One Thing In My Defense, Not That It Matters: I Know Something Carter Never Knew, Or Helene, Or Maybe You. I Know What "nothing" Means, And Keep On Playing.

There Must Be Times When Everybody Writes When They Feel They're Evading Writing.

I Don't Have A Very Clear Idea Of Who The Characters Are Until They Start Talking.

It Occurs To Me That We Allow Ourselves To Imagine Only Such Messages As We Need To Survive.