I Think Of My Pile Of Old

Because Maybe, In A Way, We Didn't Leave It Behind Nearly As Much As We Might Once Have Thought. Because Somewhere Underneath, A Part Of Us Stayed Like That: Fearful Of The World Around Us, And No Matter How Much We Despised Ourselves For It--unable Quite To Let Each Other Go.

I Like The Fact That By Mimicking The Way Memory Works, A Writer Can Actually Write In A Fluid Way - One Solid Scene Doesn't Have To Fall On Another Solid Scene, You Can Just Have A Fragment That Then Dovetails Into Another One That Took Place 30 Years Apart From It.

I Quizzed Him A Lot On This Point And I Suspect The Truth Was That It Was Like A Lot Of Things At That Age: You Don't Have Any Clear Reason, You Just Do It. You Do It Because You Think It Might Get A Laugh, Or Because You Want To See If It'll Cause A Stir. And When You're Asked To Explain Afterwards, It Doesn't Seem To Make Any Sense.

I Realised, Of Course, That Other People Used These Roads; But That Night, It Seemed To Me These Dark Byways Of The Country Existed Just For The Likes Of Us, While The Big Glittering Motorways With Their Huge Signs And Super Cafes Were For Everyone Else.

Now When I Look Back To The Guildford Of That Time It Seems Far More Exotic To Me Than Nagasaki.