Try Not To Live In A Linguistic

Anthropology Has Always Struggled With An Intense, Fascinated Repulsion Towards Its Subject.... [the Anthropologist] Submits Himself To The Exotic To Confirm His Own Inner Alienation As An Urban Intellectual.

It's A Pleasure To Share One's Memories. Everything Remembered Is Dear, Endearing, Touching, Precious. At Least The Past Is Safe Though We Didn't Know It At The Time. We Know It Now. Because It's In The Past; Because We Have Survived.

We Fret About Words, We Writers. Words Mean. Words Point. They Are Arrows. Arrows Stuck In The Rough Hide Of Reality. And The More Portentous, More General The Word, The More They Can Also Resemble Rooms Or Tunnels. They Can Expand, Or Cave In. They Can Come To Be Filled With A Bad Smell. They Will Often Remind Us Of Other Rooms, Where We'd Rather Dwell Or Where We Think We Are Already Living. They Can Be Spaces We Lose The Art Or The Wisdom Of Inhabiting. And Eventually Those Volumes Of Mental Intention We No Longer Know How To Inhabit Will Be Abandoned, Boarded Up, Closed Down.

To Suffer Is One Thing; Another Thing Is Living With The Photographed Images Of Suffering, Which Does Not Necessarily Strengthen Conscience And The Ability To Be Compassionate. It Can Also Corrupt Them. Once One Has Seen Such Images, One Has Started Down The Road Of Seeing More - And More. Images Transfix. Images Anesthetize.

The Process Of Building A Self And Its Works Is Always Too Slow. One Is Always In Arrears To Oneself.