And I Am In Retirement From Love.

I Do Have A Very Conscious Desire Not To Be Academic. I'm Antiacademic. I Hate Jargon. I Hate That Sort Of Pretension. I Am A Person Who [commits] Breaches Of Decorum - Not In Private Life, But In My Work. They Are Part Of My Mode Of Operation. That Kind Of Playfulness Is Part Of My Nature In General. The Paradox That, In A Way, To Take Something Very Seriously, You Can't Always Be Serious About It.

But The Body Fails Us And The Mirror Knows, And We No Longer Insist That The Gray Hush Be Carried Off Its Surface By The Cloth, For We Have Run To Fat, And Wrinkles Encircle The Eyes And Notch The Neck Where The Skin Wattles, And The Flesh Of The Arms Hangs Loose Like An Overlarge Sleeve, Veins Thicken Like Ropes And Empurple The Body As Though They Had Been Drawn There By A Pen, Freckles Darken, Liver Spots Appear, The Hairah, The Hair Is Exhausted And Gray And Lusterless, In Weary Rolls Like Cornered Lint.

I Get Very Tense Working, So I Often Have To Get Up And Wander Around The House. It Is Very Bad On My Stomach. I Have To Be Mad To Be Working Well Anyway, And Then I Am Mad About The Way Things Are Going On The Page In Addition. My Ulcer Flourishes And I Have To Chew Lots Of Pills. When My Work Is Going Well, I Am Usually Sort Of Sick.

We Have Scarcely Gotten Home ... When Our Children's Sneezes Greet Us, Skinned Knees Bleed After Waiting All Day To Do So. There Is The Bellyache And The Burned-out Basement Bulb, The Stalled Car And The Incontinent Cat. The Windows Frost, The Toilets Sweat, The Body Of Our Spouse Is One Cold Shoulder And The Darkness Of Our Bedroom Is Soon Full Of The Fallen Shadows Of Our Failures.

I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That People Who Can’t Speak Have Nothing To Say. It’s One More Thing We Do To The Poor, The Deprived: Cut Out Their Tongues … Allow Them A Language As Lousy As Their Life