Everything is cyclical. Historical eras go through times of intense cynicism, broken by periods of intense idealism.

I see ghosts everywhere, and that is partially a function of my being incredibly near-sighted and reading way too late into the night.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

The trouble is that America's become a utopia accessible only to some people. Others get trampled on. Perhaps it's a problem of size. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, once gave the ideal number of a given community as 148. That seems about right to me. There's something idealistic about that - in a group of 148 people you can get to know everybody.

Reading about utopianism, and eventually creating characters with their own utopian ambitions, was the way I learned to live with being a pregnant person, to stave off the sense of incipient disaster. You're bringing a person into this overcrowded world, knowing they're one day going to die and there's nothing you can do about it.

Amor animi arbitrio sumitu, non ponitur; we choose to love; we do not choose to cease loving.

When I write new worlds, I work in layers, building and throwing out, and building anew.