What Is Taken Away Is

In Those Days, We Imagined Ourselves As Being Kept In Some Kind Of Holding Pen, Waiting To Be Released Into Our Lives. And When The Moment Came, Our Lives -- And Time Itself -- Would Speed Up. How Were We To Know That Our Lives Had In Any Case Begun, That Some Advantage Had Already Been Gained, Some Damage Already Inflicted? Also, That Our Release Would Only Be Into A Larger Holding Pen, Whose Boundaries Would Be At First Undiscernible.

The Imagination Doesn't Crop Annually Like A Reliable Fruit Tree. The Writer Has To Gather Whatever's There: Sometimes Too Much, Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Nothing At All. And In The Years Of Glut There Is Always A Slatted Wooden Tray In Some Cool, Dark Attic, Which The Writer Nervously Visits From Time To Time; And Yes, Oh Dear, While He's Been Hard At Work Downstairs, Up In The Attic There Are Puckering Skins, Warning Spots, A Sudden Brown Collapse And The Sprouting Of Snowflakes. What Can He Do About It?

Paris Is Certainly One Of The Most Boastful Of Cities, And You Could Argue That It Has Had A Lot To Boast About: At Various Times The European Centre Of Power, Of Civilisation, Of The Arts, And (self-advertisingly, At Least) Of Love.

The Writer Has Little Control Over Personal Temperament, None Over Historical Moment, And Is Only Partly In Charge Of His Or Her Own Aesthetic.

You Can Put It Another Way, Of Course; You Always Can.