To Live Is To See,

The Zest For Life Of Those Unusual Men And Women Who Make A Great Zealous Success Of Living Is Due More Often In Good Part To The Craftiness And Pertinacity With Which They Manage To Overlook The Misery Of Others. You Can Watch Them Watch Life Beat The Stuffing Out Of The Faces Of Their Friends And Acquaintances, Although They Themselves Seem To Outwit The Dense Delays Of Social Custom, The Tedious Tick-tock Of Bureaucratic Obfuscation, Accepting Loss And Age And Change And Disappointment Without Suffering Punctures In Their Stomach Lining.

We New Yorkers See More Death And Violence Than Most Soldiers Do, Grow A Thick Chitin On Our Backs, Grimace Like A Rat And Learn To Do A Disappearing Act. Long Ago We Outgrew The Need To Be Blowhards About Our Masculinity; We Leave That To The Alaskans And Texans, Who Have More Time For It.

City People Try To Buy Time As A Rule, When They Can, Whereas Country People Are Prepared To Kill Time, Although Both Try To Cherish In Their Mind's Eye The Notion Of A Better Life Ahead.

It's Incongruous That The Older We Get, The More Likely We Are To Turn In The Direction Of Religion. Less Vivid And Intense Ourselves, Closer To The Grave, We Begin To Conceive Of Ourselves As Immortal.

True Solitude Is A Din Of Birdsong, Seething Leaves, Whirling Colors, Or A Clamor Of Tracks In The Snow.