Approaching Eye Level 1996

Others made me a slave but I must squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.

I discovered that people introduced subjects in order to allude, not to discuss.

For each man the sentences the other spoke had become an infliction – and then a wound.

people speak to transmit information, not to connect.

It was a period of exile not because of the inability to connect but because I was unable to talk about the inability to connect. Whenever I raised the matter my colleagues looked at me: first puzzled, then uneasy, then dismissive. I was making a great deal out of not very much, I was told.

All I know is that in their company I felt abstract, and in mine they felt the same.

In the presence of shared temperament conversation almost never loses its free, unguarded flow.

Good conversation is dependent on a simple but mysterious fit of mind and spirit that cannot be achieved, it just occurs. It’s not a matter of mutual interests or class concerns or commonly held ideals, it’s a matter of temperament; the thing that makes someone respond instinctively with an appreciative ‘I know just what you mean’, rather than a challenging ‘What do you mean by that?’

In friendship as in love, peace is required as well as excitement. Unless both are present, the graft does not take.

Connected to myself, I am now connected to others. Solitude is relieved. I am at peace inside my skin.