November 26

You do many things in a provisional version. You answer briefly because you mean to write at greater length later. You let a remark stand that isn't quite right, because a better opportunity will come along next time. Later serves as a reserve from which any carelessness can be paid off.

Without this reserve, much would be hard to bear. If you treat every action as final, you easily grow solemn, you check yourself constantly and can hardly try anything out any more. There is vanity in that too: the wish that every moment should say something definitive about you.

The real distinction lies elsewhere. Something can be light and unfinished and still wholly meant. A short answer is not careless as long as it doesn't secretly point to another one that is supposed to excuse it. It only goes askew when you are only half present in it and save the other half for a better version that may never be written.

Sometimes you notice this in a sentence, just before you send it. It stays short. You read it through once more anyway, as if it had to stand without anything to follow.