People Are Always Talking About The Joys

If Art Is Not To Be Life-enhancing, What Is It To Be?

How Unnatural The Imposed View, Imposed By A Puritanical Ethos, That Passionate Love Belongs Only To The Young, That People Are Dead From The Neck Down By The Time They Are Forty, And That Any Deep Feeling, Any Passion After That Age, Is Either Ludicrous Or Revolting!

May We Agree That Private Life Is Irrelevant? Multiple, Mixed, Ambiguous At Best - Out Of It We Try To Fashion The Crystal Clear, The Singular, The Absolute, And That Is What Is Relevant; That Is What Matters.

Joy, Happiness ... We Do Not Question. They Are Beyond Question, Maybe. A Matter Of Being. But Pain Forces Us To Think, And To Make Connections ... To Discover What Has Been Happening To Cause It. And, Curiously Enough, Pain Draws Us To Other Human Beings In A Significant Way, Whereas Joy Or Happiness To Some Extent, Isolates.

“how Does One Grow Up?” I Asked A Friend The Other Day. There Was A Slight Pause; Then She Answered, “by Thinking.”