I keep thinking of houses I've spent time in - not even lived in, just visited - and wanting to cry because I'll never go back there. I've left too many houses behind. I remember that one in Italy that was open to the cicadas and the night and the spotlights in the garden. The pieces of pottery she showed us, Roman jars hauled up from the sea bed yesterday, bubbled with casts of sea creatures, limescale. The quiet emptiness of the inside, with the modern art and modern sofa. Everything around the hearth of the outside world. The garden. Spotless and quiet and new. And sitting outside eating pasta and smelling the lemon that's supposed to get rid of mosquitos.
Does trying hard count?
I don't know any more - or don't think I know - what good writing is. I've seen it and it's not like mine. I don't know what I'm doing. I throw handfuls of clay together and I think it's a vase until I see a real vase. I'm a monkey playing with a typewriter. I have lost everything.