Pots Can Show Malice, The Patterns Of

She Sits In Her Usual Ample Armchair, With Piles Of Books And Unopened Magazines Around Her. She Sips Cautiously From The Mug Of Weak Herb Tea Which Is Now Her Substitute For Coffee. At One Time She Thought That She Could Not Live Without Coffee, But It Turned Out That It Is Really The Warm Large Mug She Wants In Her Hands, That Is The Aid To Thought Or Whatever It Is She Practices Through The Procession Of Hours, Or Of Days.

I Would Have A Flick Of Fear, As In A Dream When You Find Yourself In The Wrong Building Or Have Forgotten The Time For The Exam And Understand That This Is Only The Tip Of Some Shadowy Cataclysm Or Lifelong Mistake.

In Twenty Years I've Never Had A Day When I Didn't Have To Think About Someone Else's Needs. And This Means The Writing Has To Be Fitted Around It.

I Saw How The Forms Of Love Might Be Maintained With A Condemned Person But With The Love In Fact Measured And Disciplined, Because You Have To Survive. It Could Be Done So Discreetly That The Object Of Such Care Would Not Suspect, Any More Than She Would Suspect The Sentence Of Death Itself.

I Just Believed It Easily, The Way You Might Believe And In Fact Remember That You Once Had Another Set Of Teeth, Now Vanished But Real In Spite Of That. Until One Day, One Day When I May Even Have Been In My Teens, I Knew With A Dim Sort Of Hole In My Insides That Now I Didn't Believe It Anymore.