I've come to the time of life when I don't read much, if any, new literature, knowing how much there is of it and knowing how good so much of it is, so much of it so good that it can't be great, its goodness crowding out greatness, overwhelming the possibility of greatness, strangling that possibility as it were with its goodness, so that the great is forced by the clamor of the good, and all the hustle and bustle which attends the good, to hunker down in the reeds and bulrushes and wait to be seen by passersby able to see the cloud in the puddle.

Cloud in puddle, near Big River, Mendocino, Ca., March 17, 2017.