was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment,
taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now, we are
all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage may have
ended. Tomorrow the cat may die. The phone call from the
lover, for all my waiting, may not ever come, but just at the
moment, just now, that’s all right. I am breathing in and out.
Realizing this, I began to notice that each moment was not
without its beauty.
The night my mother died, I got the call, took my sweater,
and set out up the hill behind my house. A great snowy
moon was rising behind the palm trees. Later that night, it
floated above the garden, washing the cactus silver. When I
think now about my mother’s death, I remember that snowy
moon.
Thepaintinghas a life of its own.
I try to let it come through.
JACKSON POLLOCKThe poet William Meredith has observed that the worst
that can be said of a man is that “he did not pay attention.”
When I think of my grandmother, I remember her
gardening, one small, brown breast slipping unexpectedly
free from the halter top of the little print dress she made for
herself each summer. I remember her pointing down the
steep slope from the home she was about to lose, to the