I really felt neurotic - it was a neurotic reason - but I had to teach very, very well. That sucked up a lot of oxygen from my time and my creative thinking.

"Time" does not mean "occasion."

These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.

The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.

With so many brothers, I could always find a pair of shorts to borrow and run around in.

[Cancer] didn't make me more intense about not working more and just having fun more. It didn't do that either. 

The city and nature, the built stone and the found stone, concrete and slate, poetry addresses them all democratically.