June 13, 1979
The morning was clear and crisp today, the sky a deep blue, and the air had a bite to it. In a few more days, the solstice—and once again we’ll start that long swing downward into the deepest depths of winter.
My life is like a vast, hollow vessel, and each day is a drop falling from the sky. The shape of the vessel is still being formed, and with each drop I grow into it a little more, slowly, slowly filling it up, day by day, drop by drop. I must live out my fate, and my fate is there, in the shape of the vessel—in what I learn, what I see, how I use each day, each drop I’m given.
Every moment something new is born. And every moment brings me closer to that unimaginably distant place and time, when the last drop will fall, and the vessel overflows.
I'm afraid to dive in to life. Maybe I can hold back, just a little? But we all follow the same path. And it must be a joy to die knowing that your life is complete, you've given all you have, loved so deeply—you've really done it.
Or is death just pain, always wishing you had done a little more, never satisfied, a terrible rage?
