There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days.

Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.