A thinking mind is not swallowed up by what it comes to know. It reaches out to grasp something related to itself and to its present knowledge (and so knowable in some degree) but also separate from itself and from its present knowledge (not identical with these). In any act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other but also keeping visible to difference. It is an erotic space.

I don't know that we really think any thoughts; we think connections between thoughts. That's where the mind moves, that's what's new, and the thoughts themselves have probably been there in my head or lots of other people's heads for a long time.

That night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attempted although married six months. Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not sure we got it right. He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully. Early next day I wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had published in a small quarterly magazine. Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us. Or should I say ideal. Neither of us had ever seen Venice.

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Under the seams runs the pain.

Now every mortal has pain and sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it's dark to me. We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life. We know no other. The underworld's a blank and all the rest just fantasy.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.