Admitting how ill we are, how deep the damage goes, how constantly the abuse cycle is repeated and how horribly we have failed those who most deserve our care and protection.

The failure of protection, the importance of recognizing the ways in which we influence (and infect) each other - the fact that being an "individual" can't protect you - these are issues I've been thinking about for a while.

In Frankenstein there is a transfer first of life into death (in the creation and animation of the monster), and then of death into life, as the monster takes his revenge on the father who gave him life but withheld recognition.

The performance group The Ant Farm redoing JFK's assassination in Dallas was an event that struck a chord with me, especially when one of the members said they'd only intended to do it once, but the Dallas audience insisted they repeat the performance.

The most important aspect of writing the pieces that make up this eighth book was yielding to my obsessive side, letting my own "complicated grief" in on the process. You can imagine how tempting it is to try to fight the part of you that loops and loops, caught up in tangled sorrow from which it seems there's no escape.

We live in a culture that insists on "moving on" (even while our loyalty to and love of the franchise and the sequel give away a larger loopiness). But I tend to dwell or obsess or meditate, and I came back to, for instance, the figure of Dickens's "Miss Havisham" with some (self) recognition if not relief.

Is the professor who insists we read Ernest Hemingway again instead of Gertrude Stein "obsessing"? Because although I did a BA in English, an MFA in Poetry, and a year's worth of a PhD, Stein was an author I had to discover on my own. She wasn't on the syllabus anywhere in all that time.