Silence, maybe. Space to write. A quiet column of time in which to give audience to all that’s in one’s head. That might be what a writer wants. But that’s not always true. Having made room for these things precisely, a writer can find that they are absolutely not what she wants. She can find […]
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The text had two questions, the first from the daughter, who is ten: “Are you related to Robert Louis Stevenson?” And the second from the mother, who is old enough to be a mother: “(The Daughter) is reciting her most favorite tomorrow… ‘The Swing.’ I’ve been coaching her to try to recite it without the […]
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“How is your book doing?” she asked me, and I loved the question for the way she worded it: As if the book itself was doing, as if it had agency, a life of its own. As if, left to its own devices in my desk drawer, in my laptop files, it might nonetheless continue […]
Read more“Do not hurry; do not rest.” — Goethe Here’s news– or is it?: I did not make my Thanksgiving deadline. There are lots of reasons for this, one of them being that, while Thanksgiving is on a Thursday, preparations and their busy-ness for it begin Well In Advance of that, which meant that I was doing nothing […]
Read moreI am at the traffic light, and the sun is in my eyes. I haven’t owned a pair of sunglasses in over two weeks, because as I climbed out of the car at the airport, the glasses slipped from the top of my head and broke on the concrete. Thus began my journey to China: […]
Read moreHeedless Perhaps we love the shore because the debris here could not be ours no matter how hard our lives. Or because the long shelf of land continues on under the water so even here at the edge of the world the edge is uncertain. Perhaps we love that the water rises to uncertain levels […]
Read moreHere we are! I made it work! Yes, here I am with My Dear Lynne, back in early July at Duke Gardens. She sent the photo to me yesterday and with it a little text, reminding me of the Day We Were Having: “It was the fateful day of the heat, and trees that cannot […]
Read moreI have a big day ahead of me. A Big Day. I have about twelve papers left to grade, then a few residual make-up work things to grade, and then I proceed to write comments for report cards. I don’t mind any of this. I really don’t. I am eager to teach my students to […]
Read moreWho Lately Lives In China but Is Home in America For Just a Little While. We joined with other pilgrims on the journey home. They came from London town, and how it warmed the heart to hear our native tongue again! An onion is an onion still no matter what you call it. A man’s […]
Read moreI’ll admit that my last post was Unusual. But this, O Reader, is because my last post wasn’t so much for you as it was for My Dear Lynne, who is Not Quite Languishing in China. Lynne called me this evening, at 9:30 my time and, coincidentally, 9:30 her time (which would be convenient and […]
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