One Hand, Five Homes. A Lifetime In

I've Seen Novels That Have Grown Out Of One Story In A Collection. But It Hasn't Occurred To Me To Take Any Of Those Stories And Build On Them. They Seem Very Finished For Me, So I Don't Feel Like Going Back And Dredging Them Up.

Gogol Remembers Having To Do The Same Thing When He Was Younger, When His Grandparents Died...he Remembers, Back Then, Being Bored By It, Annoyed At Having To Observe A Ritual No One Else He Knew Followed, In Honor Of People He Had Seen Only A Few Times In His Life...now, Sitting Together At The Kitchen Table At Six-thirty Every Evening, His Father's Chair Empty, This Meatless Meal Is The Only Thing That Seems To Make Sense.

Each Day She Removes A Small Portion Of The Unwanted Things In People's Lives, Though All Of It, She Thinks, Was Previously Wanted, Once Useful. She Feels The Sun Scorching The Back Of Her Neck. The Heat Is At Its Worst Now, The Rains Still A Few Months Away. The Task Satisfies Her. It Passes The Time.

When I Sit Down To Write, I Don't Think About Writing About An Idea Or A Given Message. I Just Try To Write A Story Which Is Hard Enough.

There Were Times Ruma Felt Closer To Her Mother In Death Than She Had In Life, An Intimacy Born Simply Of Thinking Of Her So Often, Of Missing Her. But She Knew That This Was An Illusion, A Mirage, And That The Distance Between Them Was Now Infinite, Unyielding.