The Grace of Shadows

I've learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what's unsaid, what's underneath. Understanding on another level of being. 


I have no talent. I'm not talking about the literary marketplace: I mean how I see myself. I write poems for myself, like these notebooks, to think things through, that's all.


The soul has two distinct layers. One is the "I"--capricious, fickle, uncertain, it hops from joy to despair. The other, the "soul," is steady, sure, unwavering, watchful, ready, aware.


I received the grace of shadows. The grace of remaining in the dark.


How to write so that the poem is as close as possible to silence? Zen--to play on the lute without strings. Simplicity--of course. But how? What kind?


Seneca: "To treat the days like separate lives."


Bruno Schultz: "To ripen into childhood."


I walk around disguised as an overweight old lady.


Never. Never. Never. I could fill a notebook with that word.


Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell's wall. To write like that.


From here.