Activity

1/31/77

If one’s entire life is work, preparation, diligence, eternally aiming toward something as a student aims toward a diploma, it is bewildering to reach the goal—or even 90% of it. What does one do then? And why? Was the objective money? No. Leisure? No. Fame? Again no. Just an abstract ex…

9/12/71

What troubles the small and the great is the difficulty of reconciling their personal dramas with such things as the moon in its course, the strength of the sea, the inevitability of death. Everyone feels so small, yet his problems shake him with the force of hurricanes. It does not make…

1/5/70

These are “man of the house” problems, for I do think if it concerned a married couple, the husband would worry more than the wife, as he would be expected to deal with them. No wonder men die a bit earlier than their wives. It’s 3:30 AM. I lie in bed reading in this first hideous month w…

11/3/66

In the most terrible and terrifying moments of my life (ten, perhaps, in a lifetime) Mozart, not a sedative, is the hope—though not the healing power. There is no healing power. But Mozart knew all that. I, or we, suffer here and now, and he often wrote his music during the worst. It is …

8/9/65

With the new acquaintance: that moment in the conversation when I realize he has a different morality, weltanschauung from mine, like a sudden canyon between us. We can change direction and find some bridge across somewhere else. But the knowledge lurks. It will turn up again years from n…