First Sentence

""A year from now," I said, as I handed around the blue looseleaf notebooks, "I will collect these again, but they'll be filled-with the events of your daily life, sudden encounters with the past, unbidden memories, dreams, angry letters, quatrains, quotations that are part of the world the writer salvages in his notebook, dialogues with God, or with yourselves, grammar exercises, sessions with the dead who continue to speak to you, stories about times of danger, milestones in your life, places of refuge, invocations to the wind, whatever you like . . ."