My Library

but I don’t mind the hurt because it feels so good … then it fades away again … I know it’s coming back, and it does … much, much stronger and bigger, up through me, the best and happiest feeling I could ever have, so happy I want to cry, and the hurt is so strong it’s cutting me right up the middle in two pieces … then it goes back again, down out the bottom of me, and I know that there is nothing, nothing nicer I will ever feel than what just was, no hurt could hurt more than what I just felt … and I feel it rising again and I don’t think I could stand it if it was any stronger, but there it is getting bigger and stronger, the good, good, good tingle and the rain roar and the hurt so hard, coming right up to my head, terrible, terrible sharp hurt … this is so good and so hurting there can’t ever be anything that feels so good and hurts so much, never never … then it starts to go away and I know that I will always remember this bright, bright good and the big, big hurt and nothing will ever be as good or hurt so much … but there it comes again, no, no!… I can’t stand it again, I can’t, I can’t! The good makes me cry, it’s so good, and the hurt makes me cry, it hurts so much, it can’t be more than the one before, it was the biggest there is, it can’t be any bigger, the good and the hurt … but it is, and I scream with joy and pain and I know this is the greatest of all there is, the exquisite joy, beauty, that transcends any thought or consciousness … that the pain is merely the anguish of physical structure attempting to contain energy beyond the ability to do so, that one day I will experience it again without the pain because I will understand better, one day it will take place, the great glory of … I feel hands picking me up and I am crying a little, not too much, and I open my eyes and raise my head. The music in the Victrola has stopped and she, my mother, is looking at me and saying something … CLICK! … Yes, yes, I remember what a great privilege I felt it was to have been given permission to play the Victrola, and I proudly never broke a single record … symphonies, operas my mother liked, plus some