Before the beginning is the tricky part, I guess. But when you’re writing the beginning, how do you differentiate it from what came before? How do you start anything? How could anyone end anything?

With nothing. That’s the entire continuum; the words and the nothing between. That wasn’t obvious to me, of course, for years. How many thousands of notebook pages can you fill before the beginning and end are ultimately almost meaningless? I am not a musician or a mystic, so this stuff has to turn up arranged just the right way on a page, or I’ll never get it. Well I got it; like a fucking bullet:

An uphill walk with a cigarette in each hand, both lit with sunlight from a looking glass. A miserable year of good luck, however many and whatever it takes.