From My life, by Lyn Hejinian.

It was 1979, the year in which I was reading Montaigne. I had began to expect someone to die.

I boosted the volume on the stereo, because I can type faster when I don’t hear my hands.

Words are guards, so words are wives.

I cannot close my ears, I have no ear lids.

Words heard with the eyes.

Life is hopelessly frayed, all loose ends.

What follows a strict chronology has no memory.

I found myself dependent on a pause, a rose, something on paper. It is a way of saying, I want you, too, to have this experience, so that we are more alike, so that we are closer, bound together, sharing a point of view –so that we are “coming from the same place”

She sat every afternoon in her chair waiting for her headache, exactly as one might sit on a bench awaiting a bus.

Hold back, as less from friends; hold the book, hold up, then hold on tight, hang on.

It seems that we hardly begin before we are already there. It was cancer but we couldn’t say that. A name trimmed with colored ribbons. It was a warning that “things will always go our way” no longer.

The new cannot be melodic, for melody requires repetition. Revelry in education.

We will only understand what we have already understood.