Credibility Is A Basic Survival

Cities Have Always Offered Anonymity, Variety, And Conjunction, Qualities Best Basked In By Walking: One Does Not Have To Go Into The Bakery Or The Fortune-teller's, Only To Know That One Might. A City Always Contains More Than Any Inhabitant Can Know, And A Great City Always Makes The Unknown And The Possible Spurs To The Imagination.

Growing Up North Of San Francisco, I Immersed Myself In The Local Landscape And In Books About Native Americans, Cowboys, And Pioneers That Seemed To Ground Me In It, But To Pursue Culture In Those Days Meant Being Spun Around Until Dizzy And Then Pushed East.

When Someone Doesn't Show Up, The People Who Wait Sometimes Tell Stories About What Might Have Happened And Come To Half Believe The Desertion, The Abduction, The Accident. Worry Is A Way To Pretend That You Have Knowledge Or Control Over What You Don't--and It Surprises Me, Even In Myself, How Much We Prefer Ugly Scenarios To The Pure Unknown. Perhaps Fantasy Is What You Fill Up Maps With Rather Than Saying That They Too Contain The Unknown.

Think Of Civil Society And The State As Joined In A Marriage Of Necessity. You Already Know Who The Wife Is, The One Who Is Supposed To Love, Cherish And Obey: That's Civil Society. Think Of The State As The Domineering Husband Who Expects To Have A Monopoly On Power, On Violence, On Planning And Policymaking.

To Write Is To Carve A New Path Through The Terrain Of The Imagination, Or To Point Out New Features On A Familiar Route. To Read Is To Travel Through That Terrain With The Author As A Guide-- A Guide One Might Not Always Agree With Or Trust, But Who Can At Least Be Counted On To Take One Somewhere.