When I Travel, I Feel More Like

It Is Remarkable Indeed How We Human Beings Are Capable Of Delighting In The Mating Call Of A Flower While We Are Surrounded By The Charred Carcasses Of Our Fellow Animals.

When People, Particularly Young People And Especially Young Men, Can't Imagine Themselves As Heroes In Narratives That They Construct For Themselves, They Look To Be Heroes In Some Other Way. So Young Men In America Of, Let's Say, Muslim Background, Only A Tiny, Tiny Minority - So Small As To Be Almost Zero - Are Likely To Ever Commit Terrorist Acts.

As A Society, You Were Unwilling To Reflect Upon The Shared Pain That United You With Those Who Attacked You. You Retreated Into Myths Of Your Own Difference, Assumptions Of Your Own Superiority. And You Acted Out These Beliefs On The Stage Of The World, So That The Entire Planet Was Rocked By The Repercussions Of Your Tantrums, Not Least My Family, Now Facing War Thousands Of Miles Away.

I Took A Couple Of Creative Writing Classes With Joyce Carol Oates At Princeton University, And In My Senior Year There, I Took A Long Fiction Workshop With Toni Morrison. I Fell In Love With It.

We Are All Refugees From Our Childhoods. And So We Turn, Among Other Things, To Stories. To Write A Story, To Read A Story, Is To Be A Refugee From The State Of Refugees. Writers And Readers Seek A Solution To The Problem That Time Passes, That Those Who Have Gone Are Gone And Those Who Will Go, Which Is To Say Every One Of Us, Will Go. For There Was A Moment When Anything Was Possible. And There Will Be A Moment When Nothing Is Possible. But In Between We Can Create.