Picking berries, being given a wish, and spiritually drilling for diamonds

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Walking to a friend's house for dinner, I stopped to pick berries in the brambles just off the path. But reaching for the ripest, I saw, further on, one a little riper. This was repeated, never was a berry picked, until I was crashing wildly through the brush, always seeing another, more succulent, just out of reach. I had only a remote sensation that I should now be elsewhere, that intentions were being abdicated. But, having the possibility of feasts I had chosen to chase crumbs, and, having eaten nothing, I did not realize the difference. (a fiction)

It does not matter if we are incapable, as long as we are capable of being incapable.

If I was given one wish I would not know what to wish for; I would have to wish for what I would wish for, if I knew what it was for which I should wish.

One must use a drill made of diamond in order to mine diamonds. Such tools inevitably leave diamond trailings. Forgetful of this, there are those who, inspecting their samples, erroneously cry "Diamonds!". Their ecstasy is honest, they have simply forgotten that they were searching with what they were hoping to find.

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These fragments are taken from unpublished writings by Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.