Thoreau has a good bit of prose:

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look…To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

 I’m learning how to paint – obsessively, frothing at the mouth – learning what tints not to use. If I stay true, I will be left with none.

I’ve experienced this once. I’ve also had intimations – in sex, in dance, in good conversation, which are the same in their offerings of reprieve – but I’ve experienced it truly the once. Void of any tints, I.

Or perhaps there was no disillusion at all. Perhaps I simply encircled it all.

I have to remember. No, that’s not it. I have to feel. Only feel. My flitterings with words, my fumblings with notes and refrains – these are my attempts. And I suspect that when I am fully conscious of this, without having to remember, there will be no more words that need be written.