My Heart Is Broken,” She Goes. “it’s

Art Doesn't Have To Do Anything. It Just Has To Be There For The Fierce Pleasure We Take In Doing It.

Woke Up This Morning With A Terrific Urge To Lie In Bed All Day And Read.

And What Did You Want? To Call Myself Beloved, To Feel Myself Beloved On The Earth.

If We're Lucky, Writer And Reader Alike, We'll Finish The Last Line Or Two Of A Short Story And Then Just Sit For A Minute, Quietly. Ideally, We'll Ponder What We've Just Written Or Read; Maybe Our Hearts Or Intellects Will Have Been Moved Off The Peg Just A Little From Where They Were Before. Our Body Temperature Will Have Gone Up, Or Down, By A Degree. Then, Breathing Evenly And Steadily Once More, We'll Collect Ourselves, Writers And Readers Alike, Get Up, "created Of Warm Blood And Nerves" As A Chekhov Character Puts It, And Go On To The Next Thing: Life. Always Life.

In The Beginning, When I Was Trying To Write, I Couldnt Turn Off The Outside World To The Extent That I Can Now.