I Am Too Nervous To Eat Pie.

And Did You Get What You Wanted From This Life Even So? I Did.

Then I Said Something. I Said, Suppose, Just Suppose, Nothing Had Ever Happened. Suppose This Was For The First Time. Just Suppose. It Doesn't Hurt To Suppose. Say None Of The Other Had Ever Happened. You Know What I Mean? Then What? I Said.

If We're Lucky, Writer And Reader Alike, We'll Finish The Last Line Or Two Of A Short Story And Then Just Sit For A Minute, Quietly. Ideally, We'll Ponder What We've Just Written Or Read; Maybe Our Hearts Or Intellects Will Have Been Moved Off The Peg Just A Little From Where They Were Before. Our Body Temperature Will Have Gone Up, Or Down, By A Degree. Then, Breathing Evenly And Steadily Once More, We'll Collect Ourselves, Writers And Readers Alike, Get Up, "created Of Warm Blood And Nerves" As A Chekhov Character Puts It, And Go On To The Next Thing: Life. Always Life.

Every Great Or Even Every Very Good Writer Makes The World Over According To His Own Specifications.

I've Crossed Some Kind Of Invisible Line. I Feel As If I've Come To A Place I Never Thought I'd Have To Come To. And I Don't Know How I Got Here. It's A Strange Place. It's A Place Where A Little Harmless Dreaming And Then Some Sleepy, Early-morning Talk Has Led Me Into Considerations Of Death And Annihilation.