“Agnes Martin tells me that I need not fear being alone. To be alone is to face not one fear but multiple fears, and to know them enough to differentiate them. When I am alone in the worst way, I am trapped with myself. Something in me doesn’t want me to live. No—something in me doesn’t want me to continue. It must not be life, what I’ve been doing. It can’t be life, to not want to live.”
— — Yanyi, from The Year of Blue Water
















