The
base one goes on being base, and the noble
one noble, to the end.
The last week has been a bad one; I have been
realizing how things used to be with me.
Sometimes I get used to being dead inside,
but lately it has been as if a window
beside me had suddenly opened, and as if all
the smells of spring blew in to me. There is
a garden out there, with stars overhead, where
I used to walk at night when I had a single
purpose and a single heart. I can remember
how I used to feel there, how beautiful
everything about me was, and what life and
power and freedom I felt in myself. When the
window opens I know exactly how it would
feel to be out there. But that garden is closed
to me. How is it, I ask myself, that everything
can be so different with me when nothing here
has changed? I am in my own house, in my own study, in the
midst of all these quiet streets where my friends live.
They are all safe and at peace with themselves.
But I am never at peace. I feel always on the edge
of danger and change.
I keep remembering locoed horses I used
to see on the range when I was a boy.
They changed like that. We used to catch them
and put them up in the corral, and they developed
great cunning. They would pretend to eat their oats
like the other horses, but we knew they were always
scheming to get back at the loco.
It seems that a man is meant to live only
one life in this world. When he tries to live a
second, he develops another nature.
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