The Past Beats Inside Me

All One Wants To Do Is Make A Small, Finished, Polished, Burnished, Beautiful Object . . . I Mean, That's All One Wants To Do. One Has Nothing To Say About The World, Or Society, Or Morals Or Politics Or Anything Else. One Just Wants To Get The Damn Thing Done, You Know? Kafka Had It Right When He Said That The Artist Is The Man Who Has Nothing To Say. It's True. You Get The Thing Done, But You Don't Actually Have Anything To Communicate, Apart From The Object Itself.

We Carry The Dead With Us Only Until We Die Too, And Then It Is We Who Are Borne Along For A Little While, And Then Our Bearers In Their Turn Drop, And So On Into The Unimaginable Generations.

What I Was Afraid Of Was My Own Grief, The Weight Of It, The Ineluctable Corrosive Force Of It, And The Stark Awareness I Had Of Being, For The First Time In My Life, Entirely Alone, A Crusoe Shipwrecked And Stranded In The Limitless Wastes Of A Boundless And Indifferent Ocean.

And Indeed Nothing Had Happened, A Momentous Nothing, Just Another Of The Great World's Shrugs Of Indifference.

I Never Went To University. I'm Self-educated. I Didn't Go Because I Was Too Impatient, Too Arrogant.