Art Is A Game Only If You

If I Observe My Cats Carefully, It Is Partly Because I Observe Everyone I Deal With As Carefully As I Can And Partly Because They Amuse And Entertain Me. They Are An Important Part Of The Fabric Of My Daily Life.

Learning To Love Differently Is Hard, Love With The Hands Wide Open, Love With The Doors Banging On Their Hinges, The Cupboard Unlocked, The Windroaring And Whimpering In The Rooms.

I Don't Find That Writing About Parts Of My Life Had Much Effect Except In Some Cases To Improve My Memory. To Get Into Parts Of The Past I Want To Recall Very Vividly, I Use A Form Of Directed Meditation.

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

The Real Writer Is One Who Really Writes. Talent Is An Invention Like Phlogiston After The Fact Of Fire. Work Is Its Own Cure. You Have To Like It Better Than Being Loved.