January 1 1973, Joyce Carol Oates skriver

... The uncanny calm of freezing, layered skies. Clouds opaque and twisted like muscles. Idyllic on the river, "unreal". On this New Year´s Day I am thinking about another winter, three years ago, in London, when my life, the "field" of perceptions and memories that constitutes "Joyce Carol Oates" - was funelled most violently into a point: dense, unbearably, gravity like Jupiter´s. Another second and I would have been destroyed. But another second - and it was over.

... Query: Does the individual exist? What is the essential, necessary quality of (sheer) existence....