Yesterday I rediscovered you: strange, unfathomable, pretty, delightful, shy, vain. Only then, I realised that your complaint, that I had been neglecting you, was true after all - but I was forgiven, until the next time.

Balance does not lie in the rejection of imbalance, but is an expression of the balance of imbalance and balance, successively, in parallel, and in the absence of both.

You are only thirty-eight, but there are times when your bones ache, and you sense an old woman gradually making her presence felt within your frame.

He said, here is how to stand your ground with a coward who fears you, but has more power than you, and is showing the first tendencies towards making your life difficult: First, a warning shot across the bows; second, a blade in the heart; third, you stand aside to reveal the mocking crowd. Once you have defeated this person, manifest human warmth, and let him be.

I don't understand, I replied.

Curse your enemies with enlightenment, he said. Then, when they are afraid, manifest untrammelled companionship within illusion.

Why is it that after two days of unplaceable unease, you are suddenly filled with an unplaceable happiness? Maybe it is because two fish kissed, in the dark, in the depths.

They consider themselves visionary, but their visions, like their essays are coddled by history. They disappear into their own reading. I do know several people of vision, and they are quite different. They have no forum, they have no peers. If you have a vision, you are all alone.

You are exasperated by my carelessness with mementos. I know I should keep a scrapbook, frame the pictures, and put the all the loose photos in an album. I would rather let the wind scatter them around the house, into forgotten books and drawers, to lie dormant until, one day, they are rediscovered. Icons and links are nothing without the power to move - and that power is reliant on the shock of renewal, like an almost-forgotten friend who knocks on your door to renew your acquaintance after an absence of many years.

I am a musician and, because I would not compromise my love in any sensible way, I am slowly going deaf. Furthermore, when I look around, I see those who love to write are finally twisted into madness by an obsession with stories, and I see great lovers meeting the consequences of playing cat's cradle with human relations. Everywhere I see artisans and athletes permanently damaged by the pursuit of their craft. What we love will slowly kill us. And yet, the alternative, the constant preservation of the self from pleasure and involvement, elides into a cowardice about life, and, in the end, it is the cowardice that will kill us.

After all, in the end it's all a glamour, but we need to forgive ourselves. It's not such a bad thing that we fool ourselves all the time. It seems to be enough to have the capacity to see where one went wrong, playing a game, and suddenly reached the point where one began to hurt people.

Of course, we all go straight to their bookshelves and music collections, and then we decide once and for all whether we can be friends. There is something frightening about a house with no questioning books, no curious music.

In every ignored child is the performer of the future. I love you, not because you are perfect, but because you deserve my love. Your performances are not for me, but I will support them with my heart and mind, and I will hold you when you realise that even this cannot correct the tragedies of your past.

Two dark shadows on the wall
Which dark shadow shall I be?
Two lights shine behind me
One will lose me, one will find me
One will rise, and one will fall
One will attack, and one will flee
Or, I will not make the choice:
Two dark shadows sharing a single voice