(no subject)

"The initial mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveller reach his starting point in the first place? How did I reach the window, the walls, the fireplace, the room itself; how do I happen to be beneath this ceiling and above this floor? Oh, that is a matter for conjecture, for argument pro and con, for research, supposition, dialectic! I can hardly remember how. Unlike Livingstone, on the verge of darkest Africa, I have no maps to hand, no globe of the terrestrial or the celestial spheres, no chart of mountains, lakes, no sextant, no artificial horizon. If ever I possessed a compass, it has long since disappeared. There must be, however, some reasonable explanation for my presence here. Some step started me toward this point, as opposed to all other points on the habitable globe. I must consider; I must discover it."

--Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room
(as quoted in Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses)



On a different note: My computer has decided again that it doesn't want to play nicely with mice. If I fail to respond to you in a timely manner, it doesn't mean I'm ignoring you; it probably means that I can't do anything here without hitting the Tab key seventy zillion times and I've decided my time could be spent more profitably reading books.