The artist cannot hold back; it is impossible, because writing, or any other discipline of art, involves participation in suffering, in the ills and the occasional stabbing joys that come from being part of the human drama.

In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we were asked to endure...

Lords of fire and earth and water,Lords of moon and wind and sky,Come now to the Old Man's daughter,Come from fathers long gone by.Bring blue from a distance eye.Lords of water, earth, and fire,Lords of wind and snow and rain,Give to my heart's desire.Life as all life comes with pain,But blue will come to us again.

As long as we know what it's about, then we can have the courage to go wherever we are asked to go, even if we fear that the road may take us through danger and pain.

The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.

Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!

Yet there are times when for no logical reason I feel an almost unbearable sense of isolation. Not only am I divided in myself, my underwater and above-water selves separated, but I feel wrenched away from everybody around me. This is part of being human, this knowing that we are all part of one another, inextricably involved; and at the same time alone, irrevocably alone.

Compassion means to suffer with, but it doesn't mean to get lost in the suffering, so that it becomes exclusively one's own. I tend to do this, to replace the person for whom I am feeling compassion with myself.