I Am Not Even Alive Enough To

Nothing Can Be Said: Nothing Sure, Nothing Probable, Nothing Honest. Better To Err Through Omission Than Through Commission: Better To Refrain From Steering The Fate Of Others, Since It Is Already So Difficult To Navigate One's Own.

In History And In Life One Sometimes Seems To Glimpse A Ferocious Law Which States: To He That Has, Will Be Given; From He That Has Not, Will Be Taken Away.

They Sensed That What Had Happened Around Them And In Their Presence, And In Them, Was Irrevocable. Never Again Could It Be Cleansed; It Would Prove That Man, The Human Species - We, In Short - Had The Potential To Construct An Enormity Of Pain, And That Pain Is The Only Force Created From Nothing, Without Cost And Without Effort. It Is Enough Not To See, Not To Listen, Not To Act.

I Beg The Reader Not To Go In Search Of Messages. It Is A Term That I Detest Because It Distresses Me Greatly, For It Forces On Me Clothes That Are Not Mine, Which In Fact Belong To A Human Type That I Distrust; The Prophet, The Soothsayer, The Seer. I Am None Of These; I'm A Normal Man With A Good Memory Who Fell Into A Maelstrom And Got Out Of It More By Luck Than By Virtue, And Who From That Time On Has Preserved A Certain Curiosity About Maelstroms Large And Small, Metaphorical And Actual.

Each Of Us Bears The Imprint Of A Friend Met Along The Way; In Each The Trace Of Each.