I Was Funny -- Ha-ha, Not Peculiar.

It Doesn't Ever Occur To You, As You Fashion Your Mask So Carefully, That It Will Grow Into Your Skin And Graft Itself, Come To Seem Irremovable.

There Questions Of Wanting To Be An Artist, And What Does That Mean, What Makes You An Artist? Are You An Artist If You're In A Gallery In New York And Not An Artist If You're Doing It At Home? Do You Need Legitimation To Count? If You've Been Acculturated To Believe That You Have Certain Obligations - Familial, Social, Human - If Multitasking Has Been Your Forte And That's What's Been Praised And Rewarded, Where Do You Find The Single-mindedness, The Selfishness To Do Something Like Art? I Think Those Are Questions That Arise Differently For Women And For Men.

If I Had To Summarize, Most Broadly, My Concerns As A Writer, I'd Say The Question 'how Then Must We Live?' Is At The Heart Of It, For Me.

The Professor Husband Of A Friend Of Mine Has Likened Children To The Insane. I Often Think Of It. He Says That Children Live On The Edge Of Madness, That Their Behavior, Apparently Unmotivated, Shares The Same Dream Logic As Crazy People's. I See What He Means, And Because I've Learned To Be Patient With Children, To Tease Out The Logic That's Always Somewhere There, And Irrefutable Once Explained.

Nobody Would Know Me From My Own Description Of Myself; Which Is Why, When Called Upon (rarely, I Grant) To Provide An Account, I Tailor It, I Adapt, I Try To Provide An Outline That Can, In Some Way, Correlate To The Outline That People Understand Me To Have -- That, I Suppose, I Actually Have, At This Point. But Who I Am In My Head, Very Few People Really Get To See That. Almost None. It's The Most Precious Gift I Can Give, To Bring Her Out Of Hiding.