I grew up in a family that believed love was at work in the world. I guess that's a religious idea, though of course it needn't be.

Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.

We live in specific places. We are marked by a place.

The desert is a spiritual place, we vaguely understand, and the sea the mere playground of our hedonism.

Yet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.

Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water.

The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up.