Simultaneously I Am Myself, The Child I

I Used To Distinguish Between My Fiction And Nonfiction In Terms Of Superiority Or Inferiority.

In Fiction, You Have A Rough Idea What's Coming Up Next - Sometimes You Even Make A Little Outline - But In Fact You Don't Know. Each Day Is A Whole New - And For Me, A Very Invigorating - Experience.

I ... Had What Kierkegaard Called 'the Sickness Of Infinitude,' Wandering From One Path To Another With No Real Recognition That I Was Embarked Upon A Search, And Scarcely A Clue As To What I Might Be After. I Only Knew That At The Bottom Of Each Breath There Was A Hollow Place That Needed To Be Filled.

There's An Elegiac Quality In Watching [american Wilderness] Go, Because It's Our Own Myth, The American Frontier, That's Deteriorating Before Our Eyes. I Feel A Deep Sorrow That My Kids Will Never Get To See What I've Seen, And Their Kids Will See Nothing; There's A Deep Sadness Whenever I Look At Nature Now.

And Only The Enlightened Can Recall Their Former Lives; For The Rest Of Us, The Memories Of Past Existences Are But Glints Of Light, Twinges Of Longing, Passing Shadows, Disturbingly Familiar, That Are Gone Before They Can Be Grasped, Like The Passage Of That Silver Bird On Dhaulagiri.