I look up from drawing points of light on my napkin, and there you are. I try to be composed, and not to grin like an idiot, to be self-possessed and adult. But it's a shock even when I expect it, and I rummage distractedly in my mind for the power of speech (now where did I put that? I know I had it earlier this morning). I'm quite sure I am grinning like an idiot. Everything, everything entrances me.

I know. This is a piece of that bizarre rag-coat that people call "being in love." I'm unstitching the pieces of being in love. I don't want all of them. But this piece I'll keep, thank you very much: being overbalanced by beauty. I've always been susceptible. A sudden slant of light through leaves will stop me dead on the sidewalk (to the annoyance of those walking behind me.) A face glimpsed on the bus will haunt me for days. The curve of a telephone wire against a blue-steel sky can bring me to the verge of tears.

In exactly the same way, the movement of mind can stop me dead, overwhelm me. Graceful, powerful movements of thought: it's like watching a great cat hunting, perfectly sure, perfectly intent.

I collect myself. You always give me time to collect myself; I'm grateful for that. One of the pieces that needs to be unstitched is the piece that asks for acknowledgement. (Which is why I might not post this. ) Looking for the acknowledgement is one of those movements of mind that looks like openness, looks like taking the dare -- but it's not. No. It's one of the million ways of trying to tame it. As if a tamed great cat, were such a thing possible, would not be a travesty, a pollution.

I learn. Slowly. Learning to leave things be.

I was told a great many lies, when I was young. One of the worst was this: that only things that are acknowledged are real. It's that same turn of mind that always has to fill silence with chatter, that puts television sets in waiting rooms, and muzak in elevators. Busily reifying, naming, cataloguing. Getting "buy-in."

Let it go. Send it away, even -- off with you!

The universe is on fire, from end to end, a blazing tunnel of light. Here. Take it.