I contradicted cliché, was different from every life around, free from mass identity, raised questions with few answers. Capable of comfort in victimhood immobilization in darkness, sustained by darkness, I needed no curing, nor did the world, only understanding of place. Nature waited, now welcomes. I was the bland word — unpredictable, the overused word — redemptive, a desperate character in substantive fiction, bleeding over into surprising nonfiction to construct an imagined world. Caprice of the ordinary, sketchy agreement with the second percentile, confirming order. Yes, order— clarity and beauty of form in apparent chaos, religious in intensity. And of course I heeded not the oracle, but insulated from rabid society— husks of adult life and its importance, shattered by what is — the real, the imperative, the absurd. I was the object of Southern literature— rich in conflict, productive. Compare the peaceful Western books from where I lived. Compare the twinkles of Malibu, faintly visible from wavecrest, almost dream from frigid wetsuit. And to the southwest, darkness.