The nice thing about games is that they have lines; finish lines, boundary lines, goal lines, other lines. The same people who can obsess over systems with lines and rules might become completely listless and scared in wide open space. So games are nice.

What do you play?

I can’t always think of things to say. So we’ll try something else. What does this picture make you think of? Or, just tell me about your day.

Do you live anywhere that birds or other animals move in huge numbers? What do you think of them? Do you move in any human flocks?

Have you ever wondered why a person might wrap her body around with so many stories and excuses and mythologies, when all the fears and secrets she has are perfectly ordinary, perfectly visible anyway?

Have you ever wanted to go someplace you don’t speak the language? Where no one has heard of the place you come from and no one cares? Where the customs seem bizarre but no one thinks to explain them? Where it seems anything you imagine can come true but still some things surprise you?

Have you ever wanted to throw a dart at a map and just go there with someone you have never met?

Speaking of doing things that are unsafe, I have been working a lot with paper and with taking pictures of things I draw on paper, and with letting the paper show on the screen. Oh, and there was that thing with the alligator.

Are there any life risks you are wavering about? Have there been?

I don’t think much is certain about Saint Valentine, but my favourite story about him is that he passed notes to the jailor’s daughter. Either way, he got his head chopped off.

Have you ever fallen improbably in love?

Have you ever dated a political adversary? If so, were the arguments fascinating or frustrating?

Are all of your new year’s resolutions equally ambitious, or is there a large gap between your biggest ever and your smallest ever?

What a decade. I am going to be spending New Year’s Eve holed up at home, I think, trying to figure out just what happened these past ten years.

Have you ever realized something that seemed pessimistic, except that it made you a better person?