I Myself Love To Read Those Victorian

Once, In A Dry Season, I Wrote In Large Letters Across Two Pages Of A Notebook That Innocence Ends When One Is Stripped Of The Delusion That One Likes Oneself. Although Now, Some Years Later, I Marvel That A Mind On The Outs With Itself Should Have Nonetheless Made Painstaking Record Of Its Every Tremor, I Recall With Embarrassing Clarity The Flavor Of Those Particular Ashes. It Was A Matter Of Misplaced Self-respect.

I Lost The Conviction That Lights Would Always Turn Green For Me, The Pleasant Certainty That Those Rather Passive Virtues Which Had Won Me Approval As A Child Automatically Guaranteed Me Not Only Phi Beta Kappa Keys But Happiness, Honor, And The Love Of A Good Man; Lost A Certain Touching Faith In The Totem Power Of Good Manners, Clean Hair, And A Proven Competence On The Stanford-binet Scale. To Such Doubtful Amulets Had My Self-respect Been Pinned, And I Faced Myself That Day With The Non-plused Apprehension Of Someone Who Has Come Across A Vampire And Has No Crucifix At Hand.

I Wanted To Be An Oceanographer, Actually. It's A Way Of Going Underwater. I've Always Been Interested In How Deep It Was, You Know.

I Recognize A Lot Of The Things I'm Going Through. Like, I Lose My Temper A Lot And I Become Unhinged And Kind Of Hysterical.

There's A Lot Of Landscape I Never Would Have Described If I Hadn't Been Homesick. The Impulse Was Nostalgia.