The Trouble with Being Born

Even in childhood I watched the hours flow, independent of any reference, any action, any event, the disjunction of time from what was not itself, its autonomous existence, its special status, its empire, its tyranny. I remember quite clearly that afternoon when, for the first time, confronting the empty universe, I was no more than a passage of moments reluctant to go on playing their proper parts. Time was coming unstuck from being—at my expense.

True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange which resembles inward prayer.

In the deepest part of yourself, aspire to be as dispossessed, as lamentable as God.

In the deepest part of yourself, aspire to be as dispossessed, as lamentable as God.

In the deepest part of yourself, aspire to be as dispossessed, as lamentable as God.

everything is without basis except itself. Pure to the point of abhorring even the notion of an object

Ever since I was born”—that since has a resonance so dreadful to my ears it becomes unendurable.

At first you follow, then you start going in circles, then you are caught up in a kind of mild unmenacing whirlpool, and you tell yourself you’re sinking, and then you do sink. But you don’t really drown—that would be too easy! You come back up to the surface, you follow all over again, amazed to see he seems to be saying something and to understand what it is, and then you start going round and round again, and you sink once more…. All of which is meant to be profound, and seems so. But once you come to your senses you realize it’s only abstruse, obscure, and that the distance between real profundity and the willed kind is as great as between a revelation and a whim.

In the days when I set off on month-long bicycle trips across France, my greatest pleasure was to stop in country cemeteries, to stretch out between two graves, and to smoke for hours on end. I think of those days as the most active period of my life.

An ancient cleaning woman, in answer to my “How’s everything going?” answers without looking up: “Taking its course.” This ultra-banal answer nearly brings me to tears.