When We Can't See A Pattern, We

I Weaned Myself On The Nostalgia Equivalent Of Methadone (less Addictive, Less Obvious, Less Likely To Make You Crazy): Missing What I Had Never Had.

I Came From A House Full Of Books, So I Took Reading For Granted. I Was An Outdoorsy Little Kid, Too, So I Got The Best Of Both Worlds By Taking Books Up Trees And Reading There.

The Girls I Dream Of Are The Gentle Ones, Wistful By High Windows Or Singing Sweet Old Songs At A Piano, Long Hair Drifting, Tender As Apple Blossom. But A Girl Who Goes Into Battle Beside You And Keeps Your Back Is A Different Thing, A Thing To Make You Shiver. Think Of The First Time You Slept With Someone, Or The First Time You Fell In Love: That Blinding Explosion That Left You Cracking To The Fingertips With Electricity, Initiated And Transformed. I Tell You That Was Nothing, Nothing At All, Beside The Power Of Putting Your Lives, Simply And Daily, Into Each Other's Hands.

Both Back When I Was Acting And Now That I'm Writing, I've Always Wanted The Same Thing Out Of My Career: To Be Able To Get Up In The Morning And Do What I Love Doing.

I Read A Lot. I Always Have, But In Those Two Years I Gorged Myself On Books With A Voluptuous, Almost Erotic Gluttony. I Would Go To The Local Library And Take Out As Many As I Could, And Then Lock Myself In The Bedsit And Read Solidly For A Week. I Went For Old Books, The Older The Better - Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean Tragedies, A Dusty Translation Of Laclos - So That When I Finally Resurfaced, Blinking And Dazzled, It Took Me Days To Stop Thinking In Their Cool, Polished, Crystalline Rhythms.