The artists without children are delighted by all the free time, for a time, until time itself begins to take on an accusatory look, a judgmental cast, because the fact is it is hard to fill all this time sufficiently, given the sufferings of others.

Writing is routinely described as “creative”—this has never struck me as the correct word. Planting tulips is creative. To plant a bulb (I imagine, I’ve never done it) is to participate in some small way in the cyclic miracle of creation. Writing is control. The part of the university in which I teach should properly be called the Controlling

Everybody learns the irrelevance of these matters next to “real suffering.”

But I am talking in hypotheticals: the truth is that not enough carriers of this virus have ever been willing to risk the potential loss of any aspect of their social capital to find out what kind of America might lie on the other side of segregation. They are very happy to “blackout” their social media for a day, to read all-black books, and

The single human, in the city apartment, thinks, I have never known such loneliness. The married human, in the country place with partner and children, dreams of isolation within isolation.

The funny thing about Barbara is she has a little dog who she insists is a well-behaved dog but who, in reality, either barks or tries to bite pretty much everyone who comes near—except Barbara. New residents—grad students, adjuncts—sometimes believe Barbara and bend down to pet him, but we got with the program long ago and speak to Barbara only,

Look at them scuttling like rats from a sinking ship . . . and what they running from? A COLD? These people are crazy. Just wash your damn hands! Ain’t complicated. They out here acting like it’s THE END OF THE WORLD. These people make me laugh. You see me running? I’m not scared of this shit! I’m gonna be scared of the flu? In what world? No, no,

This is all better said by Kierkegaard, in a parable: “THE DOG KENNEL BY THE PALACE” To what shall we compare the relation between the thinker’s system and his actual existence? A thinker erects an immense building, a system, a system which embraces the whole of existence and world-history etc.—and if we contemplate his personal life, we discover

It seems it would follow that writers—so familiar with empty time and with being alone—should manage this situation better than most. Instead, in the first week I found out how much of my old life was about hiding from life. Confronted with the problem of life served neat, without distraction or adornment or superstructure, I had almost no idea of