Sometimes, what comes out of my fingers seems like gold -- and then sometimes it seems like fool's gold. I am rather fascinated by that volatility...it isn't connected to the quality of ideas -- writing isn't a command and control process, in which the concepts come first and tell the language, or one's share of it, how to get to work. The concepts are vaguely there, a sort of drape fluttering and room hum, and one's share of the language is sprawled on the floor, grinding up crayons and picking their noses. And then some cognitive clearing occurs, and the language either jumps up and starts spontaneously doing the dance of the bumble bee back from the pollen laden flowers -- which is good -- or it bucks and whinnies like a dying mule -- which is bad.

Roger Gathman