It takes a combination of ways to do these things, more than discipline. It’s a way of life. It’s like diet or gymnastics. You can know all the gymnastic things, all the exercises. You can know all the diets, but if you don’t do the diets, if you don’t do the exercise, it won’t work. It’s the same if you have some rules, but you don’t live them. It doesn’t work.

You’re talking about going back to as a freshman in high school. Every day from August until — the season is growing in pro ball — but August to December. Practice is at this time. It’s 4:00 to 6:00 in high school, it’s 2:00 to 4:00 in college, and it’s 1:00 to 3:00 in pro ball, but that is your routine.

The bitterness. I am very sad if I think of the status of the world now. This is my deepest inspiration. This could be also an inspiration for the next generation or generations in literature. Inspiration to give something for the next generation, somehow to survive this time because these are very, very dark times and we need much more power in us to survive this time than before.

So I got this new attitude.  Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

The only way out is through.

A canoe, mixed sun and cloud, no deadlines in sight.

The white-water canoe run I did solo at Lady Evelyn Park 20 years ago. It was impromptu. It took the skin off my knees. It was an unnecessary risk.

Of dying, only if painful and protracted, or if I get stuck inside an inert body. I would also not wish to be trapped in a jar.

I don’t know. Probably Alice, maybe. But we were contemporaries, Alice Munro. I think it was probably most in poetry. I was of that age to get influenced. After a while, you don’t get influenced because your brain has turned to cement.

Lazy, anxious, and distracted.