ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 4
A:
I think it's that I always had the feeling that what is really true,
really valuable is hidden in small, insignificant places. You know,
like when you're walking someplace and you notice at the back of a
building, right where things necessary to whatever goes on in there
are carried in, a place that's been let go--tall weeds, grass gone
to seed, the steps a bit crumbled, trash or discarded objects left to
sit and make little decomposing sculptures--that sort of thing. I
don't know if I'm saying this right. Anyway, these places or things,
no one notices them, but they've got these bright little flowers
showing, or an odd combination of shapes and lines, there's something
vital there and also something that's failed and is passing, forgotten.
Kind of a bit of history that no one cares about, but it contains the
only wisdom we need, the only comfort available. Again, I think I'm
not saying this well, and maybe I've wandered far from the subject.
Anyway, it's this impulse I have to value what's small, thrown away,
forgotten, but composing its own secret, highly important space. So
maybe I have this need to leave things short or broken and to discard
them, meaning leave them where they can be found but not where they
call attention to themselves, and my vanity makes me think that by
this means I've given them an importance, a significant insignificance
that some more public and complete construction would lack.