"This memoir is a hatchet to slash through my own heavy flesh and through the flesh of anyone else who happens to get in the way....But, you see, this is not fiction. This is life. My problem is that I don’t know what I am doing. I lived all this mess but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what I mean by “it.” I have a story to tell, yes, and no one else could tell it but me, but if I tell it now and not next year it will come out one way, and if I could have forced my fat, heaving body to start this a year ago it would have been a different story then."














































Joyce Carol Oates

"I have to work with only the thing that's working."

"Ah sense is what you're making."

Nicholas is in observance.

"I don't know about you but money doesn't belong to me."

"Your money?"

"Why do I hold it precious? The more I think about it I just can't see owning anything in my life. Everything seems borrowed for a bit. Everything seems to flow right out of my grasp up and into including friends...

"Up and into?"

"The only thing I can say that is truly mine, is this observance of this stuff. My observing of this is the only thing I own and can't escape from..."

"I don't know where to start."

"Of course you do."

"No."

"I can wake up, get out of bed and begin watching things come into view, and then disappear. A person can walk into my room talk to me and leave.It can be 5 minutes 8 or 20 hours but they will leave.  I can capture the living room for a moment as I lose the bedroom. Everything is on a treadmill. Not solid. Not mine even if I held it for the rest of my life.

"In here it's the coffee cake it gets down in your gut and becomes a part of your body."

"My observation of all of this is the only thing I can't shake."