What I Wanted To Do Seemed Simple.

At The Risk, Then, Of Being Shunned By Some Of My Gloomier Peers, I Venture To Tell You That Writers Work Like Demons, Suffer Greatly, And Are Also Happy, In Unmistakable Ways, Some Of The Time. If We Had No Knowledge Of Happiness, Our Novels Wouldn't Sufficiently Resemble Real Life. Some Of Us Are Even Made A Little Bit Happy, On Occasion, By The Writing Process Itself. I Mean, Really, If There Wasn't Some Sort Of Enjoyment To Be Derived, Would Any Of Us Keep Doing It?

That Summer When She Was Eighteen, It Seemed Anything Could Happen, Anything At All.

She Is, Above All Else, Tired; She Wants More Than Anything To Return To Her Bed And Her Book. The World, This World, Feels Suddenly Stunned And Stunted, Far From Everything.

I Was Living My Own Future And My Brother's Lost One As Well. I Represented Him Here Just As He Represented Me There, In Some Unguessable Other Place. His Move From Life To Death Might Resemble My Stepping Into The Kitchen - Into Its Soft Nowhere Quality And Foggy Hum. I Breathed The Dark Air. If I Had At That Moment A Sense Of Calm Kindly Death While My Heart Beat And My Lungs Expanded, He Might Know A Similar Sense Of Life In The Middle Of His Ongoing Death.

He Wanted To Tell Her That He Was Inspired And Vigilant And Recklessly Alone, That His Body Contained His Unsteady Heart And Something Else, Something He Felt But Could Not Describe: Porous And Spiky, Shifting With Flecks Of Thought, With Urge And Memory; Salted With Brightness, Flickerings Of White And Green And Pale Gold; Something That Loved Stars Because It Was Made Of The Same Substance.