The waves wash over the child’s magnificent sand castle. The Jew consoles the heartbroken builder. “The castle will always be more beautiful in your memory than it would ever have been in the harsh light of the day. Tomorrow, the waves of your mind will erase even the memory of your castle. Making is its own best reward.”
The Jew
By Charles Bernstein, dedicated to poet Jerome Rothenberg on the occasion of his 80th birthday last year. Bernstein’s Recalculating will be published this spring by the University of Chicago Press.
My mind has been filled with sand castles since I read this. We build so many of them in our lives. Is my need for passion that frail? Doomed to be broken down and swept away every time I build a monument to it, by even the most gentle lapping of entropy and time?
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