Life Is The First Gift, Love Is

I Wrote To Make Sense Out Of All The Contradictions I Experienced And To Deal With The Pain And Loss I Was Undergoing.

The Sense Of Being Jewish Never Left Me, But When My Grandmother Died, I Rebelled Against Judaism As I Knew It Then, Which Was Orthodox. I Saw The Rituals, A Lot Of Them, As Very Male, For A Long Time.

The Work Of The World Is Common As Mud. Botched, It Smears The Hands, Crumbles To Dust. But The Thing Worth Doing Well Done Has A Shape That Satisfies, Clean And Evident.

In Fiction, I Exercise My Nosiness. I Am As Curious As My Cats, And Indeed That Has Led To Trouble Often Enough And Used Up Several Of My Nine Lives. I Am An Avid Listener. I Am Fascinated By Other People's Lives, The Choices They Make And How That Works Out Through Time, What They Have Done And Left Undone, What They Tell Me And What They Keep Secret And Silent, What They Lie About And What They Confess, What They Are Proud Of And What Shames Them, What They Hope For And What They Fear. The Source Of My Fiction Is The Desire To Understand People And Their Choices Through Time.

Listening Is Terribly Important If You Want To Understand Anything About People. You Listen To What They Say And How They Say It, What They Share And What They Are Reticent About, What They Tell Truthfully And What They Lie About, What They Hope For And What They Fear, What They Are Proud Of, What They Are Ashamed Of. If You Don't Pay Attention To Other People, How Can You Understand Their Choices Through Time And How Their Stories Come Out?