Friday, April 30, 2010

My way to work today started with fifteen minutes sitting in the big stand of pines in our corner of the Forest Hills Cemetery, not a soul around but three or four squirrels, a crow, and perhaps 800,000 newly winged insects, maybe thee-eighths of an inch long, all putting their freshly unfurled wings to first use, and eager to hitch a ride whenever they can. They just sort of flew into me and clung, out of control and a touch desperate. It often takes an insistent second swipe to convince them to let go.

Whether it's a good or a bad thing I'm not sure, but when I am out in the city the wind is almost always in my face. I feel like the truck driver in Douglas Adams' world, the one on whom it always rains, in his case because the clouds just love him so.

Today I go to work without a book, I finished one a couple days ago, and this is the day to gather a new one. Something quick, something observational. Rather than intense, emotional, personal. Certainly nothing "experimental". Sunlight and bugginess doesn't lend itself to gravity, introspection, or experimentation.
Something that will let you brush off flies. Haven't you ever read a book that transfixed you, something that rooted you, rendered you impervious to physical distractions and irritations?
No!?
Then one of us here has a book you have to read.
Ask us next time you're in.

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