The Things I Keep Going

I Saw A Lot Of Lousy Movies And Watched A Ton Of Crappy Television And Read A Bunch Of Utterly Forgettable Books And Comics And Listened To Hours Of Junk Music As A Kid. And I'm Still Drawing Profitably In My Own Art On Some Of The Tawdry Treasure I Stored Up In Those Years.

They Lay There For A Few Seconds, In The Dark, In The Future, Listening To The Fabulous Clockwork Of Their Hearts And Lungs, And Loving Each Other

Bina Rolls Her Eyes, Hands On Her Hips, Glances At The Door. Then She Comes Over And Drops Her Bag And Plops Down Beside Him. How Many Times, He Wonders, Can She Have Enough Of Him, Already, And Still Have Not Quite Enough?

When I First Decided I Wanted To Be A Writer, When I Was 10, 11 Years Old, The Books That I Loved Obviously And Openly Fit That Description: They Came With Maps And Glossaries And Timelines - Books Like Lord Of The Rings, Dune, The Chronicles Of Narnia. I Imagined That's What Being A Writer Was: You Invented A World, And You Did It In A Very Detailed Way, And You Told Stories That Were Set In That World.

[i]n 1938, Superman Appeared. He Had Been Mailed To The Offices Of National Periodical Publications From Cleveland, By A Couple Of Jewish Boys Who Had Imbued Him With The Powers Of A Hundred Men, Of A Distant World, And Of The Full Measure Of Their Bespectacled Adolescent Hopefulness And Desperation.