You Are Unhappy Because You Believe In

To Write A Short Story, You Have To Be Able To Stay Up All Night.

[t]he Normal And The Everyday Are Often Amazingly Unstoppable, And What Is Unimaginable Is The Cessation Of Them. The World Is Resilient, And, No Matter What Interruptions Occur, People So Badly Want To Return To Their Lives And Get On With Them. A Veneer Of Civilization Descends Quickly, Like A Shining Rain. Dust Is Settled.

Start Dating Someone Who Is Funny, Someone Who Has What In High School You Called A "really Great Sense Of Humor" And What Now Your Creative Writing Class Calls "self-contempt Giving Rise To Comic Form." Write Down All Of His Jokes, But Don't Tell Him You Are Doing This. Make Up Anagrams Of His Old Girlfriend's Name And Name All Of Your Socially Handicapped Characters With Them. Tell Him His Old Girlfriend Is In All Of Your Stories And Then Watch How Funny He Can Be, See What A Really Great Sense Of Humor He Can Have.

But I Believed In Starting Over. There Was Finally, I Knew, Only Rupture And Hurt And Falling Short Between All Persons, But, Shirley, The Best Revenge Was To Turn Your Life Into A Small Gathering Of Miracles. If I Could Not Be Anchored And Profound, I Would Try, At Least, To Be Kind.

One Had To Build Shelters. One Had To Make Pockets And Live Inside Them.