-who Are You, Anyway? -just Someone Who

Being A Writer Is A Solitary Life. So The Little Part Of Me That's An Actor Still Enjoys The Theatrical Part Of Reading And Doing The Voices And Telling The Story.

The Statue Of Liberty's Gender Changed Nothing. It Was The Same Here As Anywhere: Men And Their Wars.

The Window Gave Onto A View Of Dove-gray Roofs And Balconies, Each One Containing The Same Cracked Flowerpot And Sleeping Feline. It Was As If The Entire City Of Paris Had Agreed To Abide By A Single Understated Taste. Each Neighbor Was Doing His Or Her Own To Keep Up Standards, Which Was Difficult Because The French Ideal Wasn't Clearly Delineated Like The Neatness And Greenness Of American Lawns, But More Of A Picturesque Disrepair. It Took Courage To Let Things Fall Apart So Beautifully.

I Hadn't Gotten Old Enough Yet To Realize That Living Sends A Person Not Into The Future But Back Into The Past, To Childhood And Before Birth, Finally, To Commune With The Dead. You Get Older, You Puff On The Stairs, You Enter The Body Of Your Father. From There It's Only A Quick Jump To Your Grandparents, And Then Before You Know It You're Time Traveling. In This Life We Grow Backwards.

There Is A Small Window Of Opportunity For Freckled Girls To Tan.