Wednesday, February 29, 2012






From amid the slovenly stacks of boxes, I hear a great horned owl who beckons me to escape, if only for a few moments. I see him dark against the pale night sky, high among bare branches. If only you could play tennis, I'm thinking. He says, hoo hoo-hoo hoo hoo-hoo hoo.



Tuesday, February 28, 2012


It's like I'm noisy, wearing work boots crusted with dry mud, clomping into a secret tea ceremony. The floor has been polished three times with a soft, dry cloth. I feel like a klutz. I blink until my eyes adjust to the delicate light. I don't know yet how fragile life is.

Monday, February 27, 2012


Things were bad. I knew he couldn't promise anything - yet I asked him anyway, would he promise a happy ending? He paused. 'Yes, I promise you, there'll be a happy ending.' His voice held not a whisper of hope.

Even though I knew he couldn't know what was going to happen, I believed him, and it got me through many a dark hour.



The film I'd like to see

The film I'd like to see is about the day before Rome fell. I want to see an artistic depiction of the mentality of people when they knew it was inevitable, but they couldn't really bring themselves to face what was about to happen, and they knew it. I'd like to see a film about that -- send one right down, please.
Why do we do things to make ourselves sad? Are we in love with sadness? No. We're in love with the contrast between sadness and ecstasy.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

'She floated at the starting point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators and judges.'

Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer