If I Had To Summarize,

I Think That One Of The Great Things About Spending - As In My Case - Twenty-something Years With Somebody Is That At Some Point You Do Love The Actual Person. They're There Little By Little, The Outline Is Really Pretty Clear.

An Abiding Preoccupation For Me Is How Much Of Our Lives Are Invisible And Unknown By Other People Like The Chekhov Story The Lady With The Little Dog.

There's A Reason Why Trainspotters Are Not Girls, There's A Reason Why There's The Myth Of The Slightly Autistic Male Genius, There's A Reason Why Gertrude Stein Believed That Her Self-presentation Was Male. One Could Argue That Was Susan Sontag Also. The Things That We Associate With Femaleness Are Not The Single-minded, Exclusive Pursuit Of A Vocation, Whether It Be Art Or Anything Else. It Is Not A Model That Is Widespread In Our Culture, It's Not Something We Think Of For Women.

And Then, Into The Fantasy, As Into A Dream, Would Come The Thought: It's Not Like This Anymore; The World Has Changed. Just The Way, Even At That Time Fully Two Years After My Mother's Death, I'd Catch Myself Thinking About Her As Alive; And Would Suddenly Remember, An Admonitory Finger Of Grief Upon My Breast, That She Was Gone.

It Doesn't Ever Occur To You, As You Fashion Your Mask So Carefully, That It Will Grow Into Your Skin And Graft Itself, Come To Seem Irremovable.