Helprin

"From my position in the garden, in a fume of early light, I cannot understand the notion of banality. So many people spend so much time protecting themselves from the ordinary and the worn that it seems as if half the world runs on a defensive principle that robs it of the tested and the true. Buf if the truth is common, must it be rejected? If the ordinary is beautiful, must it be scorned? They needn't be, and are not, by those who are free enough to see anew. The human soul itself is quite ordinary, existing by the billion, and on a crowded street you pass souls a thousand times a minute. And yet within the soul is a graceful shining song more wonderful than the stunning cathedrals that stand over the countryside unique and alone. The simple songs are the best. They last into time as inviolably as the light."


August 27, 1997