15

Thames and Hudson Ltd

30 Bloomsbury Street, WCI

England

Standley Baron editor

"It is fulfilled, what they came to market for. They have sold and bought. But more than that, they have had their moment of contact and centripetal flow. They have been part of a great stream of men flowing to a center, to the vortex of the marketplace. And here they have felt life concentrate upon them, they have been jammed between the soft hot bodies of strange men come from afar, they have had the sound of strangers' voices in their ears, they have asked and been answered in unaccustomed ways.

There is no goal, and no abiding-place, and nothing is fixed . . . .

Nothing but the touch, the spark of contact. That, no more. That, which is most elusive, still the only treasure. Come and gone, and get the clue itself.

16

. . . Everything is meant to disappear. Every curve plunges into the vortex and is lost, re-emerges with a certain relief and takes to the open and there is lost again.

[NOTE: The following paragraph is bracketed and starred]

Only that which is utterly intangible, matters. The contact, the spark of exchange, that which can never be fastened upon, for ever gone, forever coming, never to be detained: the spark of contact.

D.H. Lawrence Mornings in Mexico p 51-52

The soul of man is the theater in which every mystery is enacted.

p 62 Mornings Lawrence

Mystery still prevails. The ghasts at night dimly lit dark stone meets dark water - a heavy mist the air foreboding of tomorrow's rain dark skins of late night bathers blending with the night, a boy doing exercises by the river. beach perceptible. his quick motions lost. a man tying his dhoti in ever graceful innocence - the boats of the sand haulers small lights from the cabins. the sandstone steps descending from the darkness of the city to the darkness of the water. The water eternal cleanser of sin.