A Writer Is Always Working With Whatever

In Books I Have Traveled, Not Only To Other Worlds, But Into My Own.

And Yet We Constantly Reclaim Some Part Of That Primal Spontaneity Through The Youngest Among Us, Not Only Through Their Sorrow And Anger But Simply Through Everyday Discoveries, Life Unwrapped. To See A Child Touch The Piano Keys For The First Time, To Watch A Small Body Slice Through The Surface Of The Water In A Clean Dive, Is To Experience The Shock, Not Of The New, But Of The Familiar Revisited As Though It Were Strange And Wonderful.

I Remember Adolescence, The Years Of Having The Impulse Control Of A Mousetrap, Of Being As Private As A Safe-deposit Box.

Maybe Someday It Will Seem Quaint That, During A Time Of Plague, Some Of The Parents Of The 1990s Wanted To Deny Their Children Protection So That They Could Safeguard Their Own Self- Image. Or Maybe We'll Just Seem Like A Bunch Of Lunatics.

Being Accused Of Making Money By Selling Sex In Hollywood, Home Of The Casting Couch And The Gratuitous Nude Scene, Is So Rich With Irony That It's A Better Subject For A Comic Novel Than A Column.... On One Coast The Cops Are Busting Sex Workers On Eighth Avenue, Dragging Them Downtown To Night Court Where They Pay The Fine And Go Right Back To Their Corner; On Another They're Charging Heidi Fleiss With Pandering In A Town In Which The Verb Is An Art Form.