*    *     *

and here we go singing of it—

What are we doing? We are saying something to each other, maybe singing it. We are using that rhythm to lunge into presence, into the present, and then past it. This singing, a form of dialogue, is our passage and our presence.

It usually doesn’t last long.

*    *     *

As a child I played a game with myself obsessively. I would think a thought and then try to observe myself thinking the thought. Was it possible, I wanted to know, with a curious urgency, that I could think two things at once?

You could say that it was a form of talking to myself. Of witnessing to myself to ensure to me that I was there.