I still have not recovered from yesterday's shock. I may never recover. As a friend told me, discovering that one has had such a reader is better than an award. And she's right: it is far more wonderful.

One writes as a solitary, as a prisoner forgotten in a dungeon, as a sort of communal negation; yet simultaneously one longs to speak to a reader who comprehends a particular, impelled, spoken, shared silence.

But one hopes mostly in vain--at least, that's how I feel as I sit here at my dusty desk, watching the sparse flat fingers of morning sunlight slip through the spruce branches, through my small bedroom windows.

Being me is the loneliest profession on earth. And you, all of you, are mysterious to me, all of you who read these words. Perhaps readers are a writer's most puzzling gift.