I Often Felt Myself To Be An

No, I Don’t Have To Tell A Soul About This, I Promised Myself. When You Are A Kid, You Don’t Know Yet That A Secret, Like An Animal, Can Evolve. Like An Animal, A Secret Can Develop A Self-preserving Intelligence. Shaglike, Mute And Thick, A Knowledge With A Fur: Your Secret.

And I Do Think That Great Fiction, Even When It's Comedic, Has An Urgency Or An Inevitability To It, A Sense That The Writer Absolutely Had To Write This Particular Story In This Way.

Fiction Helps Me To Reconnect With The True, Deep Weirdness Inherent In Everyday Reality, In Our Dealings With One Another, In Just Being Alive.

Any Place, Then, Can Become A Cemetery. All It Takes Is Your Body. It's Not Fair, I Think, And I Get This Petulant Wish For Ugly Flowers And Mourners, My Mother's Old Familiar Grief. Somebody I Love To Tend My Future Grave. Probably This Is The Wrong Thing To Be Wishing For.

It Remains Unbelievable To Me That I Have Any Readers Beyond My Own Blood Relations - It's A Crazy, Wild Gift.