I know there's something I want to say, but my thoughts are a tangled string. I can't find either end, can't begin to make them straight enough to write down. Lisa's hands above my heart, Marcel crying for forty-eight hours, Johnny in Lisbon and Jean in London, Elizabeth's verse, Jonquil at the drug store -- there is no beginning to this thread. It was dark when I sat down here. The morning light is strong now, and still I haven't written anything. Picture me, muddled, in the gift-shop of the soul, trying to find the right present, but shy, unclear on the occasion or the person, only knowing I want to give something. Must give something.

I give water to the Buddhas, in this perplexity. Let this gift stand for the appropriate one, which has yet to be found. Or at least, yet to be understood.