A Hot Bath! How Exquisite A Vespertine

The Superior Thing ... Was To Be Late. Lateness Showed That Serene Contempt For The Illusion We Call Time Which Is So Necessary To Ensure The Respect Of Others And Oneself. Only The Servile Are Punctual.

Words, Living And Ghostly, The Quick And The Dead, Crowd And Jostle The Otherwise Too Empty Corridors Of My Mind ... To Move Among This Bright, Strange, Often Fabulous Herd Of Beings, To Summon Them At My Will, To Fasten Them On To Paper Like Flies, That They May Decorate It, This Is The Pleasure Of Writing.

A Hot Bath! How Exquisite A Vespertine Pleasure, How Luxurious, Fervid And Flagrant A Consolation For The Rigours, The Austerities, The Renunciations Of The Day.

Decades Have A Delusive Edge To Them. They Are Not, Of Course, Really Periods At All, Except As Any Other Ten Years May Be. But We, Looking At Them, Are Caught By The Different Name Each Bears, And Give Them Different Attributes, And Tie Labels On Them, As If They Were Flowers In A Border.

To Lunch With The Important ... That Should Be The Daily Goal Of Those For Whom Life Is Not A Playground But A Ladder.