Do you wonder why, when you see me fidget with and slip this ring from little finger to little finger, why, why I never get it turned around? You see the ring has a row of triangles around it, and when the triangles point toward the tip of my finger it reminds me of a crown, and the finger reminds me of a neck. You see I’m sensitive about the image of a crown around my neck. Why? Because the crest of the Sharp coat of arms recorded in Burke’s General Armory is an eagle’s head with a crown around its neck. I guess it’s because I’m superstitious and a little egotistic, but I see that eagle’s head like a prophesy of me, an eagle and the crest to my family shield, holding in my beak the figure also on the shield, a triangle eaten into by a conical screw. I say I’m sensitive to it, and you see I avoid it. Symbols can be so powerful and strange. I avoid it because I have my fears, but I don’t know what it means; and I don’t know what it means.
21 April 1979