Because in trying to articulate what, perhaps, joy is, it has occurred to me that among other things—the trees and the mushrooms have shown me this—joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me, which is, among other things, the great fact of our life and the lives of everyone and thing we love going away. If we sink a spoon into that fact, into the duff between us, we will find it teeming. It will look like all the books ever written. It will look like all the nerves in a body. We might call it sorrow, but we might call it a union, one that, once we notice it, once we bring it into the light, might become flower and food. Might be joy.
"Inspiration is the feeling of beginning at the threshold where Silence and Light meet. Silence and Light. Silence is not very, very quiet. It is something that you may say is lightless, darkless. These are all invented words. Desire to be, to express. Some can say this is the ambient soul -- if you go back beyond and think of something in which Light and Silence were together, and may be still together, and separate only for the convenience of argument ...
"The way one does things is private, but what one does can belong to everybody. Your greatest worth is in the area where you can claim no ownership, and the part that you do that doesn't belong to you is the most precious. It is the kind of thing you can offer because it is a better part of you; it is a part of general commonality that belongs to everybody."