it is much harder to listen than it is to speak.

the minute-humming days, like flies, buzz home to death, 

and every moment is a window on all time. this is a moment -tom wolfe.

listen, i wanted to ask you...do you, inside yourself, well, in your in most depths, do you have the impression...but i really do mean: - in your innermost recesses, that you can manage to see yourself with some degree of clarity...do you have the impression that you know who you are... 

-sarraute, you don't love yourself.

*

Extracted from a larger working process entitled, A Sense of Scent:

"What else is it you miss?" Lawrence asked believing he knew already.

These conversations. They are everything. They are everything important. Before today, we had not spoken. We went too long having them, that it has not once felt right not having them at all. It has almost been a year now and I have felt so deprived of meaning and have grown more silent not having someone I want to talk with. I figure, why talk then? Why should I ask questions when I know so few are truly listening? It is human nature to talk at each other and not to each other. It's not even romance I am saying people are without, but connection, the desire to be talked to and have someone to share with. I have tried. I meet people and ask questions out of curiosity and of course, courtesy. But then when anyone reciprocates, I can tell they are not listening for my answer but a confirmation of their own thoughts and feelings. They want words that will turn their feelings into facts. They want to hear themselves in others. Oh, I have grown so silent knowing all this. Now I ask the questions in my mind and hear what I know they would answer with. In a way, I am lucky. I hear them before they hear themselves. And I save our selves the breath needed for pretending our answers actually obey the questions. 

"You can't force awareness, Claudelean. Not everyone wants to be seen. Not everyone wants to know how they look either."

*

and yet there are moments when some of us go on a little voyage of discovery outside, 

and from there, taking up their position at a distance, 

they examine themselves...and they like what they see 

-sarraute, you don't love yourself.