LETTERS 

The writer was in the middle of one of those days where a person understands the full of life. The simple things that go into this fullness! The unself-conscious activity punctuated by laugher and conversation. All is well! Ah, you bookmen, the writer wanted to cry out, you with your nose in the abstract furies of the world's glood. Awake! Come out and dance with the fullness of life. Nothing will destroy you. You will dance through fires and your learning will become burnished and strong. You will reach to the furthest circles and embrace that life that never dies. It lived thousands of years ago and will live thousands of years from now.

The writer passed them out on tables, with their books, with their curious remedies to the world's gloom. Gloom! It was something the writer wanted to flee from with the speed of light. Gloom, gloom, the world is too much. It crushes and demoralizes. The spirit resists, awakes, and arises and walks in the shadows of gloom. The poor and frightened man who sees the world ending doesn't yet know that the germ of life will float ceaselessly through the black emptiness that has absorbed the glittering probes. Old substance will climb out of the stink pots of time and it will begin again.

And, without a doubt, when the writer thought these things within an hour he was with them. He was sitting in the open air, at a table, drinking his juice and reading a book on American history as though that would solve the problems. What a treasure trove of delight and horror is this history! The writer always searched for where the pure American experience left off from the grand traditions of Europe. Europe had become a kind of fable of sorts for the writer. He had felt at home many time in the fabled regions. Whenever America got to be too much; too much energy, corruption, and smoke, and fury the writer insinuated himself back to the fabled times. He understood that what America had to learn from Europe was a level of intellection and imagination hardly attained in the US.

To know it through itself! That was the key. Europe was a town, America was the sky itself. America was the bursting forth and the fall. It was trying to redeem itself. It was living through an interesting period of time.

David Eide
September 17, 1999
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