10/17/03, California

Who would have thought the animal would be so sensitive to the unseen world? Speculation, metaphysical and otherwise, closes an iron fist on my heart. I would not have expected it. I would not have expected it: my wars against the physical world, with words and tones, have all failed. But a few words from your lips, and I fall like Jericho.

With pain that strange purification of desires. With suffering, knowledge. With pain, the ordinary world takes on the character of the metaphysical world: meaning rushes in from so many angles. I cannot listen to any piece of music, I cannot read any book, I cannot see a tree, without being struck—no, utterly demolished—by the thing as it must be. Demolished, for what is true of the external world is also true of myself. And this need, seeing its freedom, begins to strain against the bonds I laid upon it.

How long has it lain there, made to serve desire, made to bow and scrape like Regan to Lear, mingled with regards aloof from th’entire point? How much have I mishandled to keep it there? You proved me so right in all my deepest longings, confirmed the whispers of whatever god insisted that desire follows need, and that its yoke was light. How did I forget that?

j