� Roy Cohn, in Tony Kushner�s "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches" (Act II, Scene 5)

Americans pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual: We have no system of universal health care, we don�t educate our children, we can�t pass sane gun control laws, we elect presidents like Reagan, we hate and fear inevitable processes like aging and death. Way down close to the bottom of the list of evils Individualism visits on our culture is the fact that in the modern era it isn�t enough to write, you must also be a Writer, and play your part as the protagonist in a cautionary narrative in which you will fail or triumph, be in or out, hot or cold. The rewards can be fantastic; the punishment dismal; it�s a zero sum game, and its marker is that you pretend you play it solo, preserving the myth that you alone are the wellspring of your creativity.

� Tony Kushner, in the Afterword to "Angels in America: Perestroika"

Apparently I have a new holiday-season tradition, and that is to reread Kushner. I�m glad. These are some things I�m thinking about, and I wanted to get them down even though I suspect it will be a little while before I�m next able to write a proper entry � my sister�s flight gets in at eleven, and since I want to take off as much time as I can to hang with her next week and do Christmas prep, while I�m at Gastro I�m going to have to be working diligently, no time to spare for the diary thing. Then Steve gets back on Thursday night so I sure as hell hope I�m busy next weekend. But I will be back as soon as I reasonably can.

I feel ready to burst into 2003 like the quarterback through the big paper banner at the beginning of a football game. Thanks for reading my diary this year and by doing so holding me to all kinds of not-pretending. You have no idea what that means to me.