into the shadows, again

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.... 
        --T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


Who has the courage to go into the dark places where
there is nothing but feeling?   
                 --Thomas A. Clark, 'A Walk by Moonlight'




Baffling indeed, how this growing obsession with the spotlight of continuous display, this incessant chitter-chatter on mobile phones, Facebooks, Twitters, whatever, can coexist with, or perhaps serve to mask, a neurotic fear of genuine disclosure, a panic over the emotional openness to others --- and to oneself.


When everything, everyone is mask, performance, stage, rehearsal, calculation, is there any room left for the shadows of true intimacy, for the spontaneity of feeling?


For life itself...?