How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.

The heart lies to itself because it must.

Duende I can't remember her name. It's not as though I've been in bed with that many women. The truth is I can't even remember her face. I kind of know how strong her thighs were, and her beauty. But what I won't forget is the way she tore open the barbecued chicken with her hands, and wiped the grease on her breasts.

But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.

When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, 'What is the sound of the waterfall?' 'Silence,' he finally told me.

We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day.