And you suddenly know: It was here! You pull yourself together, and there stands an irrevocable year of anguish and vision and prayer.

To write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral. There, one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help; on scaffoldings, alone with one's consciousness.

Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening.

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything.

Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, Must I write?

I want to love the things as no one has thought to love them.