You Never Know When Somebody Will Pull

She Wondered If Literature Might Lose Some Of Its Interest When She Reached An Age Or State Of Mind Where Her Life Was Set On Such A Sure Course That The Things She Read Might Stop Seeming So Powerfully Like Alternate Directions For Her Being.

From My Childhood, I Remember A Tiny Old Woman Named Mary, Made Pale And Almost Translucent By Time. Mary's Childhood Memories Extended Back To The Confusing And Violent Finale Of The Civil War, And She Told Stories Of Brutal Murders In Those Days And Refused To Name Some Of The Killers, As If Dead Men Might Still Be Prosecuted In The Late 1950s.

That's Not A Thing Any Of Us Are Granted. To Go Back. Wipe Away What Later Doesn't Suit Us And Make It The Way We Wish It. You Just Go On

I Do The Same Things I Did When I Was 12 Years Old: I Ride Bikes, I Read Books, I Walk In The Woods. And I Listen To Music.

The Past Is A Stronger Influence In The South. But I Think Everywhere You Have This Sense That The World Changes Faster Than You Can Accommodate Yourself To. Looking Back And Seeing How You Got Where You Are Is A Useful Way To Combat Disorientation.