What Counts in the End?
I had this idea of making a fountain in my garden, and bought hardware and connecting hoses and a bag of cement. I would put the hardware in place with a scaffold and then make a mold around it and pour the concrete in the mold. After I bought these things I put them into the garage since these projects need some time to mature. I re-discovered the cement bag after a year, but the cement inside had hardened from the moisture that had gotten in. The cement was so hard that I though I had to abandon the idea of making a fountain. Instead I took a picture of the cement bag with the idea to document the concept of the project. It’s now been 2 years since I took the picture and I forgot on what day I took it. I threw the bag of cement away some time ago since it was beyond rescue. Now I have no way to find or retake the picture again, but what has been with me, all along, is the idea of the fountain. I can picture it in our backyard — it is a beautiful fountain, a piece of perfection. The idea of it is so much more perfect than the fountain I was going to make that I’m quite content with my failure to make the physical project. In fact, having moved to New York City 4 years ago, I think with alarm about the other outcome: that I might have succeeded in constructing the fountain, and then ran into the magnificent all-encompassing incomparable fountain on the Lincoln Center Plaza. I would have been crushed.
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sometimes when like a wandering poet I have sought refuge in the walls of this city and have found none. When few words have desperately brimmed inside my heart while waiting to cross the signal of the 168 street and broadway and all I wished was if I could let this moment wait and the words stay in their exact sense and perfection,but then lost them in the humdrum of daily life. Perhaps to never meet again or to meet them in a different make up with a different face. I consoled myself by saying exactly this “what matters to the end” was that unique moment when I had the words that gave me the bliss of being beyond my carnal self..what I created of it is not always a reality, but what was true was the moment ..this writing is so amazing.