Statements of Faith

I once believed [Stéphane] Mallarmé's statement that within him was that which would count the buttons on a hangman's vest was a claim to cold-blooded objectivity. Now I believe it was an acceptance of a world where the trivial and definite can vie for attention with the emotionally overwhelming.

Is Mallarmé's nothing so much different from the man who, after surviving a terrible auto crash and with his wife lying bloody in the car, steps out and begins to pick up small bits of glass? Are words bits of glass? Buttons on a hangman's vest? On a lover's clothes?

Should you reject yourself because you count buttons and pick up glass when all civilization tells you: please, this is hardly the time?

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.