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In Which Our Narrator Proves He Still Lives

“To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater.” — Marcel Proust, age 13, in answer to the question, “What is your idea of earthly happiness?”

And a quote from Samuel R Delany’s About Writing:

To learn anything worth knowing requires that you learn as well how pathetic you were when you were ignorant of it. The knowledge of what you have lost irrevocably because you were in ignorance of it is the knowledge of the worth of what you have learned. A reason knowledge/learning in general is so unpopular with so many people is because very early we all learn there is a phenomenologically unpleasant side to it: to learn anything entails the fact that there is no way to escape learning that you were formerly ignorant, to learn that you were a fool, that you have already lost irretrievable opportunities, that you have made wrong choices, that you were silly and limited. These lessons are not pleasant. The acquisition of knowledge—especially when we are young—again and again includes this experience.

Clarion 2009 is going swimmingly. Hope everyone is well.

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