After completing a project, such as a set of paintings or a novel, I lay back and let time slip by like oil left squeezed out of a tube or a spot of ink left to dry in an inkwell. I sit at a window and observe everyone else moving on with their own concerns. I care not which one of them will have read my novel or viewed my painting. I always feel that my reader and my viewer have not yet been born.

I wonder if that is what we all subconsciously wish to leave behind--cave wall markings to be discovered by someone in the distant future, someone who will hear our voices but never see our faces or know our names, yet will value our work as records of our lives and the times we lived in.