i don't know anything and i'm sorry if it seemed as though i ever did. janelle always used to comment about how she loved to listen to me speak because i would talk with a higher vocabulary than she was used to, but words are only sounds we make with faulty breath. i hide behind speech and here where the speech is foreign i feel naked and weak. if you listen to nothing else, hear this : i am shamed. perhaps in this succession i will find the humility that i seek.

and then:

i would have a house. i would live there as man and wife. i would keep a dog. i would tend to a garden and have my children playing in the backyard. i would grasp their hands and touch their skin to my lips, and feel it warm from the sun. i would bake and break bread with friends. i would sing sweet lullaby's to be carried away on the scent of summer. i would hold my lover as though my arms were an ocean, where one might drown in my affections.

what good is money to me if it is only paper and ink? what good is the promise of fame where one would seek to be exhaulted through false adoration? what good is that which we call beautiful if it only withers and fades?

i would have my house, with itīs garden and children at my breast. i would have this and in having, call life happy and sweet.