A is for Absense

"A is for absense. It is sometimes-but not always-nice to think that other people may be talking about you when you are not present, that you are the subject of a conversation you have not steered in your directions and whose evolution depends on your absense. This is what happens to the famous. And to the dead. THey can be the life of the party and never show up. For those neither famour nor dead, at the bottom of their yearning to be absent is the hope that they will be missed. Being missed suggests being loved. True, not to be the active of living recipient of what one craves may seem a sorry fate. but it takes no effort. Hang around and you interfere with the love that could be yours; die and you clear a space for yourself." ~Mark Strand, "The Weather of Words", 'A Poet's Alphabet', page 3. Not only have I returned to my journals, I've now gone back to reading, most recently I finished "Letters to a young poet" by Rainer Rilke(Jaime gave it to me two years ago, and I barely finished it). Something is going on...