Thin Glass Shell

Gwenn- I'll reply to your letter. But not right now. I think it takes some thinking.
Here's how I feel about things in general right now. I'm questioning everything in my life. Not music. But all the other outer forces. Human nature, politics, government, religion, etc. For instance, with religion I feel like I'm standing on two different grounds. One foot is one one ground with Judiasm. My other foot is on the ground that questions theology and religion. I partly believe that people from the beginning of time have sought to answer all the questions. We have the propensity to think we should know the answers to all the questions. When you stand on the edge of a cliff (metaphorically of course) and you say is, "Anybody out there?" And even though you hear nothing there is still a god? What is god, really? Where did he come from? Why us? Why create? Are there Angels? A heaven a hell? Who came up with those ideas? Who died, came back, and wrote to us about these places? How can you know with out leaving this world? Do souls just die with us? Does it all stop? Could Jesus walk on water? Did Thetis really mother Achilles? Did she put him in the River Styx or did she annoint him with ambrosia and burn his mortal parts over a fire? Did Kind Priam love both sons equally? Was Pluto ever a planet? Is the sky reflecting the sea or is the sea reflecting the sky? Why are my eyes brown? Why did I get Bb genes instead of bb? Why did my mother's dominant allele win over my grandmother's negative allele for blue eyes? Why???? Why?????? Can you really answer those questions? Why should they even be answered? Does it matter?

So here is Marianne Moore and my favorite poem at the moment.

The Paper Nautilus

For authorities whose hopes

are shaped by mercenaries?

Writers entrapped by

teatime fame and by

commuters' comforts? Not for these

the paper nautilus

constructs her thin glass shell.



Giving her perishable

souvenir of hope, a dull

white outside and smooth-

edged inner surface

glossy as the sea, the watchful

maker of it guards it

day and night; she scarcely



eats until the eggs are hatched.

Buried eight-fold in her eight

arms, for she is in

a sense a devil-

fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight

is hid but is not crushed;

as Hercules, bitten



by a crab loyal to the hydra,

was hindered to succeed,

the intensively

watched eggs coming from

the shell free it when they are freed,--

leaving its wasp-nest flaws

of white on white, and close-



laid Ionic chiton-folds

like the lines in the mane of

a Parthenon horse,

round which the arms had

wound themselves as if they knew love

is the only fortress

strong enough to trust to.