“for you are alive beyond question, like the dazzle on the sea my darling”

“PRAYER BEFORE BIRTHI am not yet born; O hear me.Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footedghoul come near me.I am not yet born; console me.I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.I am not yet born; provide meWith water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talkto me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white lightin the back of my mind to guide me.I am not yet born; forgive meFor the sins that in me the world shall commit, my wordswhen they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,my life when they murder by means of myhands, my death when they live me.I am not yet born; rehearse meIn the parts I must play and the cues I must take whenold men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountainsfrown at me, lovers laugh at me, the whitewaves call me to folly and the desert callsme to doom and the beggar refusesmy gift and my children curse me.I am not yet born; O hear me,Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is Godcome near me.I am not yet born; O fill meWith strength against those who would freeze myhumanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,would make me a cog in a machine, a thing withone face, a thing, and against all thosewho would dissipate my entirety, wouldblow me like thistledown hither andthither or hither and thitherlike water held in thehands would spill me.Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.Otherwise kill me.”

“. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.”

“You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...”

“That's a good question. I don't really remember what it was like before. Whatever I had going on, it was bullshit. It wasn't important. It's kind of a nice thing about being a dad. My identity is really about them now, and what I can do for them, so it sort of takes the pressure off of your own life. What am I going to do, who am I? Who cares, you've got to get your kids to school. So I like it that way.”

“There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond.”

“Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.”