A List of Wants and Directives
I want to go down to the stream and collect smooth stones
lay them in my bathtub and swim there.
I want to make food with many colors because good food must also please the eye and beautiful food will be red and green and purple.
I want the storm to come and the heat to break only after I have worked four days in the sun beside the sheep in the field and my hands are worn dry from picking weeds, from milking goats, from the feel of animal grain and the sound of it in an old coffee can, jingling, the sound that the sheep and the goats in the farmyard know by heart to follow.
I want to see only beautiful things for one whole day,
and the next, to cry
because I will never live long enough to see the cottonwoods I planted in the yard grow to their full magnificence.
I want to make you understand there is another way, a slower way, that I promise will bring more joy. Yes, I want to force you.
The mind's fluid powers are sensory, wrought with emotion.
To see clearly you must look outside of form, you must enter unknowing, and be surprised when a letter is a book and a book a manifesto, when a novel is a poem and a song the longest story in the world.
You will never want to hurry here.
You will never again tell me how quickly you read it, how many you've read,
how long your shelf of books has grown.
lay them in my bathtub and swim there.
I want to make food with many colors because good food must also please the eye and beautiful food will be red and green and purple.
I want the storm to come and the heat to break only after I have worked four days in the sun beside the sheep in the field and my hands are worn dry from picking weeds, from milking goats, from the feel of animal grain and the sound of it in an old coffee can, jingling, the sound that the sheep and the goats in the farmyard know by heart to follow.
I want to see only beautiful things for one whole day,
and the next, to cry
because I will never live long enough to see the cottonwoods I planted in the yard grow to their full magnificence.
I want to make you understand there is another way, a slower way, that I promise will bring more joy. Yes, I want to force you.
The mind's fluid powers are sensory, wrought with emotion.
To see clearly you must look outside of form, you must enter unknowing, and be surprised when a letter is a book and a book a manifesto, when a novel is a poem and a song the longest story in the world.
You will never want to hurry here.
You will never again tell me how quickly you read it, how many you've read,
how long your shelf of books has grown.
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