It seems that wherever I went I was hounded by people urging me to suck in my gut and go harder. They would never give tip on me-my father, my teachers, my coaches, even a girl friend or two. I was a challenge, I guess: a piece of string that does not wish to be knotted. My father was by far the most tireless of those who tried to give me direction, to sharpen my initiative, to piece together some collective memory of hardwon land or dusty struggles in the sun. He put a sign in my room.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH THE TOUGH GET GOING

I looked at this sign for three years (roughly from ages fourteen to seventeen) before I began to perceive a certain beauty in it. The sentiment of course had small appeal but it seemed that beauty flew from the words themselves, the letters, consonants swallowing vowels, aggression and tenderness, a semiselfrecreation from line to line, word to word, letter to letter. All meaning faded. The words became pictures. It was a sinister thing to discover at such an age, that words can escape their meanings. A strange beauty that sign began to express.

My father had a territory and a company car. He sold vitamins, nutritional supplements, mineral preparations, and antibiotics. His customers included about fifty doctors and dentists, about a dozen pharmacies, a few hospitals, some drug wholesalers. He had specific goals, both geographic and economic, each linked with the other, and perhaps because of this he hated waste of any kind, of shoe leather, talent, irretrievable time. (Get cracking, Straighten out. Hang in.) It paid, in his view, to follow the simplest, most pioneer of rhythms-the eternal work cycle, the bloodhunt for bear and deer, the mellow rocking of chairs as screen doors swing open and bang shut in the gathering fragments of summer's sulky dusk. Beyond these honest latitudes lay nothing but chaos.