Maybe it’s wrong to be a person who can be made happy
by a lamp. This is a notebook from spring 2019
but I know exactly which lamp I had in mind.
The question has haunted me for some time.
If you’re this sort of person your mind will fly past wrong,
even happy, to get to the lamp. What kind of lamp
has that power? Surely it must be costly or rare or treasured
by a family through generations. But this lamp was found 
on a sidewalk in the Western Addition, San Francisco, in 2001
for ten dollars. Rectangular, the base is deep green porcelain 
with crackle glaze; its fittings are bronze and its light 
glows in three strengths through an old silk shade.
Do you begin to see what I mean? And if so, does your
understanding lead you towards happy or towards wrong?
If you’re going to be made happy by a lamp, that’s that.
Nothing will stop you: not years of self-reflection,
not even the persistence of the question. Yet it seems,
to a person happy in this way, that you must try not to
marry the sort of person whose mind a lamp leads towards wrong.