You Learn A Lot, Writing Fiction.

I'm Not An Historian And I'm Not Wanting To Write About How I Perceive The Social Change Over The Century As A Historian, But As Somebody Who's Walked Through It And Whose Life Has Been Dictated By It Too, As All Our Lives Are.

We Open Our Mouths And Out Flow Words Whose Ancestries We Do Not Even Know. We Are Walking Lexicons. In A Single Sentence Of Idle Chatter We Preserve Latin, Anglo-saxon, Norse: We Carry A Museum Inside Our Heads, Each Day We Commemorate Peoples Of Whom We Have Never Heard.

I Can Remember The Lush Spring Excitement Of Language In Childhood. Sitting In Church, Rolling It Around My Mouth Like Marbles--tabernacle And Pharisee And Parable, Tresspass And Babylon And Covenant.

The Consideration Of Change Over The Century Is About Loss, Though I Think That Social Change Is Gain Rather Than Loss.

You Have This Comet Trail Of Your Own Lived Life, Sparks From Which Arrive In The Head All The Time, Whether You Want Them Or Not - Life Has Been Lived But It Is Still All Going On, In The Mind For Better And For Worse.