Around the time I began starving, in the early eighties, the visual image had begun to supplant text as culture's primary mode of communication, a radical change because images work so differently than words: They're immediate, they hit you at levels way beneath intellect, they come fast and furious.

What is this drive to be thinner, prettier, better dressed, other? Who exactly is this other and what does she look like beyond the jacket she's wearing or the food she's not eating? What might we be doing, thinking, feeling about if we didn't think about body image, ever?

All dogs can be guide dogs of a sort, leading us to places we didn't even know we needed or wanted to go.

Desires collide; the wish to eat bumping up against the wish to be thin, the desire to indulge conflicting with the injunction to restrain. Small wonder food makes a woman nervous.

Alcoholism is the disease of more.

My recipe for bliss on a Friday night consists of a 'New York Times' crossword puzzle and a new episode of 'Homicide;' Saturdays and Sundays are oriented around walks in the woods with the dog, human companion in tow some of the time but not always.

Our culture thrives on black-and-white narratives, clearly defined emotions, easy endings, and so, this thrust into complexity exhausts.