LETTERS 

The first influences were always vain and remained so until they revealed themselves as the desire itself; the leaves, twigs, bits of clothing, bark, dead fish were markers along the path of desire. So that for a time the mind refreshed itself in impressions. It learned the various tensions abiding in the world, learned the names of things, named them and then sought to control them by connecting the names up and visualizing them on opposite poles like heads of the ambitious and criminal. The influence of mingling minds taking and giving spontaneously like some liquid gas became the first character the writer encountered.

It came down to style. And the writer had learned through experience that style was a trust. It was based on the trust that one recognized limitation. Only the brave and criminal broke the trust; the criminal as a parody of laws he understood too well and the brave as an understanding that the laws were a kind of dead skin the living had to suffer.

There was certainly fear; fear and mistrust. There was a completion so desired, so far away, so much a form of delusion, so much a seed. Whose shadow side provided the first nourishment? Whose life not lived provided the soul its first dreams? Ah, bitter fruit that permits us to pass through the ways of the world!

Let us again see, the writer thought, the center that will not hold. Let us see the contention of death dissipate in fine thoughts like sails of fast boats in a harbor of chains.

To lose the love of youth and find the love of wisdom. To love creation meant to to fight. In a moment of pure unselfishness the writer could see his potential range far beyond anything he imagined. The horizon was filled with dead horses and madmen selling the promises of nothing.