PRACTICES

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As in depth psychology each night's dreams are interpreted for more pointers on how to become
who you are, so in a manic episode you paint your apartment over and over, and it's less about
getting the right shade of off-white than about staying up night after night and brushing paint
onto walls. The ongoing revelations of physics and cosmology, like salvation or satori, each
promise prompt attainment, but once you step through the door the prize hurries away through
suites of rooms into distance. Instead of one and done you get practice. Like labors in the Greek
underworld, Sisyphus with his stone or the Danaid sisters with their sieves, the originally
advertised point is attenuated into a long curving line. The bait isn't switched so much as
revealed to be endless, because distributed through more time than anyone has. As once at a
conference a group of us stood talking during a break and Catherine came up and said she had
lost the diamond from a piece of jewelry, and who wanted to come to her room and help look for
it, and we suspected there was no diamond.