When Faced With Something I Fear, I

She Died On A Windy Gray Day In March When The Sky Was Full Of Darting Crows And The World Lay Prostrate And Defeated After Winter. Peter Lake Was At Her Side And It Ruined Him Forever. It Broke Him As He Had Not Ever Imagined He Could Have Been Broken. He Would Never Again Be Young, Or Able To Remember What It Was Like To Be Young. What He Had Once Taken To Be Pleasures Would Appear To Him In His Defeat As Hideous And Deserved Punishments For Reckless Vanity.

The Horse Could Not Do Without Manhattan. It Drew Him Like A Magnet, Like A Vacuum, Like Oats, Or A Mare, Or An Open, Never-ending, Tree-lined Road.

I Had A Period In My Life, Maybe A Decade Or So, In Which I Was Involved In That Kind Of Thing, Associating With The Elite Of Various Segments Of Society. It Always Made Me Extremely Uncomfortable. I Couldn't Wait To Get Out Of There And Change My Clothes. The Good Part About That Was Getting Home And Changing Into My Regular Clothes. Taking Off The Suit And The Tie, Taking Off The Tight Shoes, And Just Relaxing. Being Away From That Stuff. It Was Stimulating, But I Never Liked It. I Always Felt It Was A Terrible, Terrible Burden.

Whatever I Do I've Always Done Not Because I Want Something But To Compensate For A Loss, To Bring About A Balance, To Create Amends, To Make Things Right.

Of Course, You Would Have To Be Insane To Hope Your Child Grows Up To Be A Playwright Or Poet. Given The Odds, You Would Have To Be Quite Cavalier About Your Children's Future.