he reward for my
frugality was that for many years, I suffered through employment only about four months out of the year.
The other eight gave me time to brush up on my Lucretius, peruse my Pliny, and
besot myself with every writer from William Burroughs and Tristan Tsara
to Henry James and Confucius.
uring this long apprenticeship,
I achieved an enviable state of intellectual and spiritual purity.
However, I also sank into a state of physical existence so
as to threaten my undoing.
Poverty made me feel
I realized I was becoming a weirdo, and I didn't even
know if I had the artistic skills to back it up
(following the logic that it's okay to be a weirdo if you're
a great artist). I realized that it was time to see if I
was anywhere near as good as I thought I was. I had to emerge from my thought-bubble
and join the world I had scorned. I had to determine if anyone would
publish my profundities. I had to test my talent in the
lion's pit of the marketplace.
