LETTERS 

The writer would often find himself in a casual, meditative mood. He would, for instance, ask himself whether or not life on the planet was still in the sea. He felt like the careful deep sea diver whose imagination is rollicking through the infinite variations of the depths. And is the shark more important than the nautilus? But before he could answer a question like that new spores of variation jet before his eyes. They are building here but destroying there, he thought. There is a kind of desire that arches toward the stars. It's as though the heart and brain have tiny fiery lights within. And each particular becomes the sum of all particulars. No particulars are greater than the whole. Advantages gained and lost by a mere turn of the head. Even as he thought this way he felt through him a kind of waters dividing the waters.

He found himself, then, with a group of people. They laughed and talked with each other. When the group broke up and the writer was alone he pictured a warrior who goes out into the plains to fight an opponent. He is glorified through the conflict and returns to his kingdom expecting a great celebration, a great feast in his honor. But what he finds, instead, are closed shutters and his name reviled and he's spoken about in whispers. Did he fight the wrong opponent? Did the kingdom change its relation to the enemy?

Ah writer, he thought to himself, you have to remember that now you meet a lot of strangers. It's against your will. It's unprecedented but real. And they issue from the most obscure places! Why, he whispered, would I want to hear the vapid opinions of athletes or movie stars? Why would I want to hear the program of saving the world proposed by the ambassador of Uruguay? Why should I listen to the citizens buzzing along with whatever pops into their heads? The writer felt that all this unprecedented noise did one thing. It tortured him with hate against the world in general. He got dispirited. It stripped him of all simplicity and fine feeling toward the natural world and the world of citizens. He felt separation, a break. And then he saw a litany of unspeakable things.

David Eide
July 25, 1999
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