It's A Defining Difference, Curiosity. I've Never

When You Die, You Know, You Hear The Insistent Pounding That Defines All Things, Whether Of Matter Or Energy, Since There Is Nothing In The Universe, Really, But Proportion.

I Have To Confess That I Have So Rarely Experienced Triumph That I Cannot Claim To Know It Well Enough To Judge, But It Seems To Be At Best A Momentary Joy Followed Instantly By Sadness, And, Then, Of Necessity, By Wariness.

I Am Religious By Nature, I'm Not A Nihilist. I Don't Follow, I Don't Even Know What The Tenets Of Things Like Deconstructionism Are, And All Those Schools That Come Up And Their Way Of Looking At Things That People Strive To Incorporate Into What They Write. I Don't Even Know What They Are. Because I Sense From A Distance That I Don't Want To Know. And Therefore Even If I Had No Politics, Actual Politics, My Cultural Point Of View Is Hopelessly Out Of Date With The Modern Literary Sensibility. Which Is Nihilistic, And Ironic, Detached, Cool, And Cowardly.

I Believe That Israel Is Very Likely Not To Survive, It's Not Going To Last Forever, And Now There's Nothing That Someone Like Me Can Do About It, In That It's A Threat Of Nuclear Or Biological Or Chemical Attack.

Rigel, Betelgeuse, And Orion. There Was No Finer Church, No Finer Choir, Than The Stars Speaking In Silence To The Many Consumptives Silently Condemned, A Legion Upon The Dark Rooftops. The Wind Came Down From The North Like A Runner In Lacrosse, Violent And Hard, To Batter Every Living Thing. They Were There, Each One Alone In Conversation With The Stars, Mining Ephemeral Love From Cold And Distant Light.