I have lived in New York for two years, and this weekend I finally set up my office. It terrifies me to put together my own space, to set up the books, construct the desk, arrange the files and papers I collect with such greed. It seems pretentious and outlandish, a crazy fantasy gotten out of hand. In the hours between midnight and dawn, it is exhilarating to imagine myself a writer, to dream myself a passionate, creative figure in the privacy of my own imagination; in daylight, it seems preposterous. It makes me sick to my stomach when I try.

I am the first in my family to finish high school. Two of my cousins got their high school equivalency in the Marines and my father has now gone back and finished, but I was the first. Growing up, I read Reader's Digest condensed novels and love comics. There was a copy of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran and a full set of encyclopedias. My father read "Hamlet" and loved it. There were a million auto mechanic books, carpentry manuals, and issues of Popular Mechanic. The bathroom held a book called Jokes For the Pot, and there were Family Circles and cookbooks. But it is fair to say that respect for books is not the same as possessing them, and we had only a few at that.