Quite Possibly There's Nothing As Fine As

And If You Were A Spirit, And Time Did Not Bind You, And Patience And Love Were All You Knew, Then There You Would Wait For Someone To Return, And The Story To Unfold.

I Had A Period In My Life, Maybe A Decade Or So, In Which I Was Involved In That Kind Of Thing, Associating With The Elite Of Various Segments Of Society. It Always Made Me Extremely Uncomfortable. I Couldn't Wait To Get Out Of There And Change My Clothes. The Good Part About That Was Getting Home And Changing Into My Regular Clothes. Taking Off The Suit And The Tie, Taking Off The Tight Shoes, And Just Relaxing. Being Away From That Stuff. It Was Stimulating, But I Never Liked It. I Always Felt It Was A Terrible, Terrible Burden.

Winter Then In Its Early And Clear Stages, Was A Purifying Engine That Ran Unhindered Over City And Country, Alerting The Stars To Sparkle Violently And Shower Their Silver Light Into The Arms Of Bare Upreaching Trees. It Was A Mad And Beautiful Thing That Scoured Raw The Souls Of Animals And Man, Driving Them Before It Until They Loved To Run. And What It Did To Northern Forests Can Hardly Be Described, Considering That It Iced The Branches Of The Sycamores On Chrystie Street And Swept Them Back And Forth Until They Rang Like Ranks Of Bells.

The Horse Could Not Do Without Manhattan. It Drew Him Like A Magnet, Like A Vacuum, Like Oats, Or A Mare, Or An Open, Never-ending, Tree-lined Road.

How The Holy And The Profane Mix In The Light Of Day And At The End Of Life Is Sometimes The Most Beautiful Thing In This World And A Compassionate Entry Into The Next. After Failure And Defeat, A Concentration Upon Certain Beauties, Though Forever Lost And Unretrievable, Can Lift The Wounded Past Roundedness And The Dying Past Dying, Protecting Them With An Image, Still And Bright, That Will Ride With Them On Their Long Ride, Never To Fade And Never To Retreat.