If You Want To Know How Much

Whether There Is Such A Thing As Reality, Of Which The Various Levels Are Only Partial Aspects, Or Whether There Are Only Levels, Is Something That Literature Cannot Decide. Literature Recognizes Rather The *reality Of The Levels.*

A Writer's Work Has To Take Account Of Many Rhythms: Vulcan's And Mercury's, A Message Of Urgency Obtained By Dint Of Patient And Meticulous Adjustments And An Intuition So Instantaneous That, When Formulated, It Acquires The Finality Of Something That Could Never Have Been Otherwise. But It Is Also The Rhythm Of Time That Passes With No Other Aim Than To Let Feelings And Thoughts Settle Down, Mature, And Shed All Impatience Or Ephemeral Contingency.

Arriving At Each New City, The Traveler Finds Again A Past Of His That He Did Not Know He Had: The Foreignness Of What You No Longer Are Or No Longer Possess Lies In Wait For You In Foreign, Unpossessed Places.

Who Are We, Who Is Each One Of Us, If Not A Combination Of Experiences, Information, Books We Have Read, Things Imagined? Each Life Is An Encyclopedia, A Library, An Inventory Of Objects, A Series Of Styles, And Everything Can Be Constantly Shuffled And Reordered In Every Way Conceivable.

You'll Understand When You've Forgotten What You Understood Before