MY BEAUTIFUL LIFE

My writing, whether in the form of poetry or essays, and stories, have all concerned themselves with the riddle of self in a changing world. Childhood was an Eden of certainty and discovery erased in the upheavals of adulthood, when what seemed incontestable became mirages. I may speak for many when I say becoming a man required that I find a new footing on what felt like the mayhem of a storm at sea. I would have welcomed a bit of nausea instead of the bewildering landscape of a world I had not anticipated. I made mistakes and paid dearly for them, and was whisked into and out of a first marriage that left me panting with regret and wounds that would take years to heal. All this found it way into my imagination and supplied me with plots and blueprints for a world I was trying to construct. But my confusion was the source of my creativity, and guided me through a labyrinth connected by catwalks and rope bridges. That gave way to a much altered vision of what life meant when confronted head on. I could handle a few wounds and pick myself up again, and that has made me, if not stronger, then a little more durable in the strange weather of the modern age -- the decline of American power, the scandals rocking the pillars of democracy, the decay of art and education, and the monopolizing of medicine and finance. Take a breath, people tell me, it will all change. So here I am, posing for an x-ray machine in these stories, asking you to recognize yourself in these fictional landscapes.