If You Had To Summarize The Old

I Wish I Could Leave You Certain Of The Images In My Mind, Because They Are So Beautiful That I Hate To Think They Will Be Extinguished When I Am. Well, But Again, This Life Has Its Own Mortal Loveliness. And Memory Is Not Strictly Mortal In Its Nature, Either. It Is A Strange Thing, After All, To Be Able To Return To A Moment, When It Can Hardly Be Said To Have Any Reality At All, Even In Its Passing. A Moment Is Such A Slight Thing. I Mean, That Its Abiding Is A Most Gracious Reprieve.

To Crave And To Have Are As Like As A Thing And Its Shadow. For When Does A Berry Break Upon The Tongue As Sweetly As When One Longs To Taste It, And When Is The Taste Refracted Into So Many Hues And Savors Of Ripeness And Earth, And When Do Our Senses Know Any Thing So Utterly As When We Lack It? And Here Again Is A Foreshadowing - The World Will Be Made Whole. For To Wish For A Hand On One's Hair Is All But To Feel It. So Whatever We May Lose, Very Craving Gives It Back To Us Again.

Characters More Or Less Present Themselves To Me. I Don't Know Their Origins. I Think If I Did, If I Seemed To Myself To Fabricate Them, I Could Not Induce Suspension Of Disbelief In Myself In The Way Writing Fiction Requires.

It All Means More Than I Can Tell You. So You Must Not Judge What I Know By What I Find Words For.

I Wrote Almost All Of It In The Deepest Hope And Conviction. Sifting My Thoughts And Choosing My Words. Trying To Say What Was True. And I'll Tell You Frankly, That Was Wonderful.