letting go

The next time I went down into the laundry the moth had died. Those ragged bits on its wingtips a sign of decay. Did she lay eggs in my papers before she fell? The things I will uplift sometime soon and take to the new place might have a few secrets concealed in them; or they might just be dross. I'll have a look when they arrive. When I arrive. New glasses, I have new glasses too, as well as a new place to live. The government remains the same. And the book is written, all four hundred pages of it. 105,000 words, many of which are not different from one another, the same words in different orders, or with different neighbours. It will have to be revised now, that process of shaping which I love so much, which is so unlike the drafting process: as if you had chosen to climb a particularly steep hill which, in the end, you only managed to reach the top of through sheer bloody-mindedness, discarding clothes, oaths, graces, style along the way. The vista is your brief reward as you survey the domain of your wanderings, seen all at once and only once as a whole; followed by the long, contemplative stroll back the way you came, picking this up, leaving that behind, moving something else somewhere else. Until you arrive back at the beginning again. And then ... let it go.