Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Gently Down

Peoples Lives, In Jubilee As Elsewhere, Were Dull, Simple, Amazing, Unfathomable-deep Caves Paved With Kitchen Linoleum. . . . What I Wanted [to Write Down] Was Every Last Thing, Every Layer Of Speech And Thought, Stroke Of Light On Bark Or Walls, Every Smell, Pothole, Pain, Crack, Delusion, Held Still And Held Together-radiant, Everlasting.

Now I No Longer Believe That People's Secrets Are Defined And Communicable, Or Their Feelings Full-blown And Easy To Recognize.

I Began To Understand That There Were Certain Talkers - Certain Girls - Whom People Liked To Listen To, Not Because Of What They, The Girls, Had To Say, But Because Of The Delight They Took In Saying It. A Delight In Themselves, A Shine On Their Faces, A Conviction That Whatever They Were Telling About Was Remarkable And That They Themselves Could Not Help But Give Pleasure. There Might Be Other People - People Like Me - Who Didn't Concede This, But That Was Their Loss. And People Like Me Would Never Be The Audience These Girls Were After, Anyway.

In Dreams You Can Have The Feeling That You've Had This Dream Before, That You Have This Dream Over And Over Again, And You Know That It's Really Nothing That Simple. You Know That There's A Whole Underground System That You Call 'dreams,' Having Nothing Better To Call Them, And That This System Is Not Like Roads Or Tunnels But More Like A Live Body Network, All Coiling And Stretching, Unpredictable But Finally Familiar - Where You Are Now, Where You've Always Been.

Memory Is The Way We Keep Telling Ourselves Our Stories - And Telling Other People A Somewhat Different Version Of Our Stories.