Straying Home

Believe Me —wo, Chinese for the first person singular I am yet a pretender to this ancient art, not much more than the moth this morning at four, fluttering at my p/c screen, believing it a flame, which it is, to my eye anyway. You’d think this art was mine from the beginning. It wasn’t. A last resort? Not that either. The luck of a fate it is, other choices tried and abandoned, irresistible temptations in the momentary. Yes, I gave myself over to them time after time. And, if I am a generation behind in manners, why should I care. Some time ago I chose to let my “wo” be gone. Believe me, the rhythms of speech in cadences are more. I fell in with it from sheer admiration of practitioners. It’s my way of surrendering to time. I gave up palavering for this blank page lighted from within. Why not. What was that “wo” compared with being upstairs alone at four A.M., arranging on an empty screen what it can let me speak. Here’s a heart’s body of love and work believing and not in ordinary moments being there, in continents and their subs where nothing is believed to exist in words unless they are regarded as lost signs, inherited, squirreling lines, but spoken, the mouth echoing like the caves of Marabar.