I Am Not Really A Writer. I

I Have Always Disliked The Morning, It Is Too Responsible A Time, With The Daylight Demanding That It Be 'faced' And (usually When I Wake For I Wake Late) With The Sun Already Up And In Charge Of The World, With Little Hope Of Anyone Usurping Or Challenging Its Authority. A Shot Of Light In The Face Of A Poor Waking Human Being And Another Slave Limps Wounded Into The Light-occupied Territory.

I Must Go Down To The Seas Again To Find Where I Buried The Hatchet With Yesterday.

Every Morning I Woke In Dread, Waiting For The Day Nurse To Go On Her Rounds And Announce From The List Of Names In Her Hand Whether Or Not I Was For Shock Treatment, The New And Fashionable Means Of Quieting People And Of Making Them Realize That Orders Are To Be Obeyed And Floors Are To Be Polished Without Anyone Protesting And Faces Are To Be Made To Be Fixed Into Smiles And Weeping Is A Crime.

People Dread Silence Because It Is Transparent; Like Clear Water, Which Reveals Every Obstacle—the Used, The Dead, The Drowned, Silence Reveals The Cast-off Words And Thoughts Dropped In To Obscure Its Clear Stream. And When People Stare Too Close To Silence They Sometimes Face Their Own Reflections, Their Magnified Shadows In The Depths, And That Frightens Them. I Know; I Know.

The Strain Of Constant Adaptation To So Many Fearful Events And Discoveries Is Already Too Much To Bear With Sanity; One Has To Keep Pretending To Slip Successfully Into The New Mould; A Time Will Come When The Tailored And Camouflaged Mind Breaks Beneath The Burden; The Stick Insect In Our Brains No Longer Cares To Resemble A Twig On The Same Habitual Human Tree In The Mere Hope That It May Survive Extinction.