So he wants to know like, because we're old.
Or?
We're old.
No.
But so one of the things you notice
is that we're looking back on memories from our childhood.
And what motivates us or draws us to writing about that
rather than looking forward into the future.
And I mean there are a lot of now poems and in the book
or that I'm writing about.
But I think one of the things for me,
one of the reasons why I write is because I don't quite
understand things.
And so I write, and I've said this before,
but I write about the things that keep me up at night.
Or the things that I worry about.
The things I wonder about.
Or things I've seen that I don't understand
how these things could happen or why they've happened.
And I know I'll never get an answer.
But somehow writing about them gets me close enough
to hold them in a place where I can make a new meaning out
of them.
And so for me, looking back, the childhood things, those
are the things I have a different kind of access
to in a different kind of I guess knowing or wonder about.
But, yeah.
I mean I think for me especially because when I wrote the book
I was away.
I was away from home.
And I so I've recently moved back to my reservation,
but I was away.
And so that was also something, that separation.
Yeah.
So I mean I think--.
Yeah.
You know, I actually remember asking
that very same question to all my teachers in graduate school.
And my teacher said, I don't know.
But when I think about it is, when
I think about my adolescence or early childhood, these memories
I keep thinking about, writing about,
those were moments in my life where I really have no agency.
I didn't have the ability or the--
I didn't have the ability to speak up for myself.
So when I write about these memories, this past event,
it's me trying to assert myself in that moment and that moment
in time.
Giving myself voice, finally.
Not being very passive.
I'm shaping that memory, I'm shaping
that experience the way I kind of remember it
or the way my imagination wants to take it.
So, I enjoy that, not being invisible or voiceless
anymore in my own past.