Back when a heart attack wasn't all that likely for me (I still haven't had one, let me hasten to add), I was plagued with hypochondriacal heart crises.

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A really fine evening, the other evening. This is not a story. It's that jamais vecu thing I think I mentioned here once. Sometimes lately I enjoy people tremendously, and this also seems new to me, the pleasure I take in their proximity. Not any and all people, I mean particular moments come to pass between myself and a near stranger. I don't know ( Read more... )

I'm thinking about writing fiction for money. I used to think I knew what was what, and part of what I knew is no one makes a living at writing fiction ( Read more... )

I went to a screening of the National Theater's King Lear. Ian McKellen is great, of course. He dodders, he weeps readily, and when he's carousing with his knights, in fact when he does anything at all, walks or gestures or even stands and breathes, you can see how his ruined frame was once much stronger, how even his tremors now are those of a ( Read more... )

Last night there was a one-off poetry class at Open Books, the poetry bookstore, and it turned out to be all close reading, two hours of close reading on the topic of how news and poems might comport with one another ( Read more... )

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Where did I read this ( Read more... )

My niece R is starting a masters degree at BU this fall. (Art history.) --She's trying to find a place to live, from Florida, via Skype and craigslist ( Read more... )

out in August.

"TERMINUS RADIEUX
Antoine Volodine

Taïga sombre et immense, steppes infinies… La scène se passe d’abord après l’irradiation complète de la Sibérie et l’écroulement de la Deuxième Union soviétique, puis des siècles plus tard. La région, dévastée par des accidents nucléaires, est à jamais inhabitable. Entourés de paysages grandioses, ( Read more... )

A Stellar's jay is on the neighboring rooftop again.
Mornings have been foggy all week, afternoons sunny. San Francisco, then Vermont.