Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.

Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places.

I sometimes imagine that as one grows older one comes to live a role which as a young person one merely 'played.

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.

Is it perhaps the one necessity of love, that it be needed? And the one great human tragedy that it so rarely is?

The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.