P R E F A C E

   Why haven't I written it all before?  Maybe it was bitterness that held
me back, maybe it was shame -- the shame of wanting to hide something of
the past.  One is often one's own worst enemy.

   The sun is slanting through the window now, covering the east wall with
warm gold.  From its perch on a picture a moth has started to circle the
room.  Soon the sun will disappear, to take up tomorrow a path known from
the beginning.  And the moth?  It may die before the day returns.

   Everything seems to want to live forever.  Consciously or
unconsciously, all aspire to the joke of eternity.  Not I: I have had my
eternity.  So in fact has everything, even if only for a second.  A second
on earth is enough to know it all.

   In the course of a lifetime, feelings begin to sift out, indescribable
feelings, that lack any bones for analysis.  They precipitate, congealing
somewhere in a person's heart.  There is no way to explain their insoluble
kernel.  People find it hard to recognize even themselves.  But those
indefinable feelings have an eternal meaning.  Washed out from the waves
of a lifetime, they are what will last.

   The sun is sinking;  evening is coming on.  The dream is approaching
again -- that dream, perhaps the kernel's outer husk:

   Water is flowing in a ditch by the road, jade green to the bottom, like
a mountain stream.  Little fish, two or three inches long, collect under
grasses washed back along its sides.  Black backs dart in and out, silver
bellies flash like stars.  All around is bright heavy light, the air is
expansive and silent.  Ruts deep in the soft road are like two railway
tracks running on ahead.  I walk down the middle of the road, my footsteps
slow, yet light.  Floating dust rises, kicked up from my shoes, looking
like early-morning mist, making the world soft and indistinct.  I feel I
have a strangely different strength of sight, that I can pass through the
thick dust and see what lies behind my consciousness.

   I see a cat, grey with white stripes.  He raises his back at me in
fright, standing astride one of the tracks in the road.  That is the cat
`we' lost.

   The cat disappears in the silence of a dream-world.

   I see four ducks swimming in the drainage ditch.  I can tell that two
are female from their upright necks and tails.  They swim silently, going
against the current of the ditch.  They seem to want to draw me into the
recesses of the remembrance of deep emotions.

   Involuntarily, I follow.  They wag their tails then, at a patch of
reeds in a pool, turn in a circle and leave.  Taking advantage of the
returning eddy of water, they thrust their way into a thick bank of reeds.

   In my dream I continue to walk through a mist of dust.  With some
effort I pull up heavy legs, yet walk lightly, like a bird flying against
an erratic wind.  Past the pool, the ducks again bore out from among the
reeds.  These aren't four large ducks, however, but ducklings.  Clothed in
golden down, they seem to melt in the yellow light.  They were there,
those ducklings, swimming happily, puffing up their chests and looking
straight at me.  Their beaks turned up at the ends expressed a taunting
amusement.

   I realize those were `our' ducks that I saw.  The little ones are as
they were as ducklings.  Time is flowing backwards: can I follow it?  Back
to that time, `our' time, even in a dream?

   Afterwards comes only confusion, a trancelike kind of dream within a
dream.  As I wake, I know that the confusion is washing through the waves
of my lifetime.  The significance of a life, of eternity, resides in the
midst of that trance.

   The sun has come up again.  The moth has disappeared, whether or not it
still lives.  I want to clarify the lines of the dream, to make them
distinct, follow them back.  I want to re-trace the path in writing,
putting it down honestly.  If there were nothing in our lives to be
ashamed of, on what basis would we judge them?

   The moth has died.  Whoever feels responsible for the brevity of its
life has the right to censure the paths it took in its solitary flight.

   The light is hitting me straight on, shining straight into the bottom
of my heart.  I float in its colour, leaving this noisy, dusty world.  I
take advantage of the inspiration and take up pen and ink.  In another
moment I might change my mind.