Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things - childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves - that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. Stories I have written, and even more importantly, stories I have managed to survive. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by the culmination of everything you have ever done. Nothing can be forgotten or erased. Our consciousness remembers. It leaves imprints and road signs towards the ending of it all. How good we are at following these omens ... well that's a whole different story.
