“Leave the dishes.Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigeratorand an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.Don't even sew on a button.Let the wind have its way, then the earththat invades as dust and then the deadfoaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzlesor the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worrywho uses whose toothbrush or if anythingmatches, at all.Except one word to another. Or a thought.Pursue the authentic-decide firstwhat is authentic,then go after it with all your heart.Your heart, that placeyou don't even think of cleaning out.That closet stuffed with savage mementos.Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teethor worry if we're all eating cereal for dinneragain. Don't answer the telephone, ever,or weep over anything at all that breaks.Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartonsin the refrigerator. Accept new forms of lifeand talk to the deadwho drift in though the screened windows, who collectpatiently on the tops of food jars and books.Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anythingexcept what destroysthe insulation between yourself and your experienceor what pulls down or what strikes at or what shattersthis ruse you call necessity.”

“...don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience...”

“See, what you do here is you work yourself away from the words, slowly shedding them until there's no more need of them, because you're them and they're you- wordless words. And then, what you want, all you want, are the slow silent white fireworks of Who-What Made It All, calling it whatever you want to until you don't call it anything at all because you don't need to, you just don't need to anymore...”

“‎'They don't know what it's like. Inside. For them it's only fun, even though I tell them it isn't. You see I don't delete. Anything. Ever.”

“What the dead don't know piles up, though we don't notice it at first. They don't know how we're getting along without them, of course, dealing with the hours and days that now accrue so quickly, and, unless they divined this somehow in advance, they don't know that we don't want this inexorable onslaught of breakfasts and phone calls and going to the bank, all this stepping along, because we don't want anything extraneous to get in the way of what we feel about them or the ways we want to hold them in mind.”

“I have to keep movingI don't want to thinkI'm going to work all day todayI don't want to stopDon't want to let my brain catch up my thoughtsHow will I be able to tell them that I'm a shadowA grey patch of cold rotting life”