I am no different from anyone else who writes: idiosyncratic voice does not come easily. One must contend with academese, for instance, its kafkaesque apparatus of critical theory. But when I become frustrated with my grammar, with my obligation to jargon, with the anxiety of influence, I hand myself a chocolate and a reminder: It could be worse. I could be writing this in Polish, in Poland. I could be having to entrust my whimsy to a language that clatters like a knight burdened by yet another crusade. Instead, I can turn to my computer screen to face the cursor cueing words in a language I play most and lie less in and I think,

I don’t ever want to go back.