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Those cheeks are shades, those limbs and members clouds, that hide the glory of Thy mind. I wrote a book that no one wants to read. One's too young to read it; another just moved and can't find the box; a third walked out of the reading before it started. My mother, she explained. It's too sentimental, a critic asserts, who admits she couldn't read it. Her husband, you know. The book is a form of knowing that none of us wants to claim. The book stands in for illness like sail for boat. The book is the material space of a suffering you don't want to live. It was easier to write than to edit. Something about addition rather than reduction, about being there instead of visiting. This is not tourism, this guidebook to unraveling. There's no sea wall you can build to keep the shore intact. The closer you get to the break, the more you want to beat it with your paddle. Don't resist, Pema writes. But that's what makes the world better, a commenter responds.

--2 June 2015