Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To

People "died" All The Time. . . . Parts Of Them Died When They Made The Wrong Kinds Of Decisions-decisions Against Life. Sometimes They Died Bit By Bit Until Finally They Were Just Living Corpses Walking Around. If You Were Perceptive You Could See It In Their Eyes; The Fire Had Gone Out. . . You Always Knew When You Made A Decision Against Life. The Door Clicked And You Were Safe Inside-safe And Dead.

I Am Very Fond Of The Oyster Shell. It Is Humble And Awkward And Ugly. It Is Slate-colored And Unsymmetrical. Its Form Is Not Primarily Beautiful But Functional. I Make Fun Of Its Knobbiness. Sometimes I Resent Its Burdens And Excrescences. But Its Tireless Adaptability And Tenacity Draw My Astonished Admiration And Sometimes Even My Tears. And It Is Comfortable In Its Familiarity, Its Homeliness, Like Old Garden Gloves When Have Molded Themselves Perfectly To The Shape Of The Hand. I Do Not Like To Put It Down. I Will Not Want To Leave It.

The World Has Different Owners At Sunrise... Even Your Own Garden Does Not Belong To You. Rabbits And Blackbirds Have The Lawns; A Tortoise-shell Cat Who Never Appears In Daytime Patrols The Brick Walls, And A Golden-tailed Pheasant Glints His Way Through The Iris Spears.

I Find There Is A Quality To Being Alone That Is Incredibly Precious. Life Rushes Back Into The Void, Richer, More Vivid, Fuller Than Before.

The Signs That Presage Growth, So Similar, It Seems To Me, To Those In Early Adolescence: Discontent, Restlessness, Doubt, Despair, Longing, Are Interpreted Falsely As Signs Of Decay. In Youth One Does Not As Often Misinterpret The Signs; One Accepts Them, Quite Rightly, As Growing Pains. One Takes Them Seriously, Listens To Them, Follows Where They Lead. ... But In The Middle Age, Because Of The False Assumption That It Is A Period Of Decline, One Interprets These Life-signs, Paradoxically, As Signs Of Approaching Death.