If You Can't Fix It, You Have

What I Find To Be Very Bad Advice Is The Snappy Little Sentence, 'write What You Know.' It Is The Most Tiresome And Stupid Advice That Could Possibly Be Given. If We Write Simply About What We Know We Never Grow. We Don't Develop Any Facility For Languages, Or An Interest In Others, Or A Desire To Travel And Explore And Face Experience Head-on. We Just Coil Tighter And Tighter Into Our Boring Little Selves. What One Should Write About Is What Interests One.

I Didn't Have A Chance To Buy You Anything," She Said, Then Held Both Closed Hands Toward Him. Uncurled Her Fingers. In Each Cupped Palm A Brown Egg. He Took Them. They Were Cold. He Thought It A Tender, Wonderful Thing To Do. She Had Given Him Something, The Eggs, After All, Only A Symbol, But They Had Come From Her Hands As A Gift. To Him. It Didn't Matter That He'd Bought Them Himself At The Supermarket The Day Before. He Imagined She Understood Him, That She Had To Love Him To Know That It Was The Outstreched Hands, The Giving, That Mattered.

Walking On The Land Or Digging In The Fine Soil I Am Intensely Aware That Time Quivers Slightly, Changes Occurring In Imperceptible And Minute Ways, Accumulating So Subtly That They Seem Not To Exist. Yet The Tiny Shifts In Everything--cell Replication, The Rain Of Dust Motes, Lengthening Hair, Wind-pushed Rocks--press Inexorably On And On.

It's Easier To Die If Others Around You Are Dying.

Anyway, There's Something Wrong With Everybody And It's Up To You To Know What You Can Handle.