art. non spoiled. life impacting and all consuming. words of thomas mann:

_...art heightens life. She gives deeper joy, she consumes more swiftly. She engraves adventures of the spirit and the mind in the faces of her votaries; let them lead outwardly a life of the most cloistered calm, she will in the end produce in them a fastidiousness, an over-refinement, a nervous fever and exhaustion, such as a career of extravagant passions and pleasures can hardly show._

i've been questioning my decision of art. wondering if it is really what i want to do with my life. but then i ask myself, what else would i do? i can think of nothing. creating. even creating with these clumsy hands not fit for a surgeon. piling stacks of letters and rubbing words hoping that they'll take. fighting the wish to *have* written something, trying to replace it with the desire to write. present replace past. future consumes all. what are my motives for art? could i in fact write an anonymous work, or would the reflecting pool's alluring grasp prove too much for less than stable footing on the shore?

watched il postino tonight with my italian class. a tear or two is always shed at the end. i know it's coming, but i'm never prepared. don pablo always brings to mind one of my favorite ideas: that of small hands. i do not know why the image strikes me so, but i cannot but curl myself into the idea of the world and myself in her small hands.

_El mundo es más azul y más terrestre

de noche, cuando duermo

enorme, adentro de tus breves manos._

don pablo neruda