Happy Is What You Realize You Are

And It Was Always The Stories That Needed The Telling That Gave Us The Rope We Could Cross Any River With. They Balanced Us High Above Any Crevasse. They Made Us Be Natural Acrobats. They Made Us Brave. They Met Us Well. They Changed Us. It Was In Their Nature To.

Nothing Is Harmful To Literature Except Censorship, And That Almost Never Stops Literature Going Where It Wants To Go Either, Because Literature Has A Way Of Surpassing Everything That Blocks It And Growing Stronger For The Exercise.

I Was At The Tail End Of The Family. The Next Brother Along Was Already Seven Years Older Than Me. I Remember Growing Up By Myself, Playing Games By Myself.

Tonight I Can Smell The Season The Way It's Usually Only Possible To At The Very First Moments Of Its Return, Before You're Used To It, When You've Forgotten Its Smell, Then There It Is Back In The Air And The Flow Of Things Shifting And Resettling Again.

Short Stories Consume You Faster. They're Connected To Brevity. With The Short Story, You Are Up Against Mortality. I Know How Tough They Are As A Form, But They're Also A Total Joy.