I'm A Hopeless 19th-century Romantic.

I Had Never Liked, Even Feared A Little, This Wild Reach Of Marsh And Mud Flats Where Everything Seemed Turned Away From The Land, Looking Off Desperately Toward The Horizon As If In Mute Search For A Sign Of Rescue.

In The City Of Flesh I Travel Without Maps, A Worried Tourist: And Ottilie Was A Very Venice. I Stumbled Lost In The Blue Shade Of Her Pavements. Here Was A Dreamy Stillness, A Swaying, The Splash Of An Oar. Then, When I Least Expected It, Suddenly I Stepped Out Into The Great Square, The Sunlight, And She Was A Flock Of Birds Scattering With Soft Cries In My Arms.

What I Was Afraid Of Was My Own Grief, The Weight Of It, The Ineluctable Corrosive Force Of It, And The Stark Awareness I Had Of Being, For The First Time In My Life, Entirely Alone, A Crusoe Shipwrecked And Stranded In The Limitless Wastes Of A Boundless And Indifferent Ocean.

Dogs Are Dim Creatures, Do Not Speak To Me Of Their Good Sense--have You Ever Heard Of A Team Of Tomcats Hauling A Sled Across The Frozen Wastes?

All I Wanted Was To Be Left Alone. They Abhor A Vacuum, Other People. You Find A Quiet Corner Where You Can Hunker Down In Peace, And The Next Minute There They Are, Crowding Around You In Their Party Hats, Tooting Their Paper Whistles In Your Face And Insisting You Get Up And Join In The Knees-up.