Monthly Archives: October 2018

I am making a repair to the steps that lead down into our back patio. The brick step is sagging, the underpinnings having given out, and I figured out a way to deal with it without getting a jackhammer and … Continue reading →

The moment of the start, rising, arms extended, feet against the blocks, breath held, and then the gunshot and driving toward the first hurdle, hoping to hit it right, not be off stride, skim into it then over it and … Continue reading →

Early in his novel, Outer Dark,Cormac McCarthy writes a single sentence. It is a mastery of movement, sight and sound: They entered the lot at a slow jog, the peaceful and ruminative stock coming erect, shifting with eyes sidled as … Continue reading →

There is a six-inch portion of a shelf in this room that contains books by Ted Hughes. Slim, paperback books, they begin with the first book I found in 1972 when I was teaching in Dorset.  My classroom was a temporary … Continue reading →

I have lived in this house for more than 50 years.  Which may say something about my limited horizons. But there is something comforting about it.  I know where the light switch is in the bathroom, in the dark.  I … Continue reading →

Cormac McCarthy wrote,  It came out of the sun at a slow canter, in a silhouette agonized to shapelessness. She crouched in the bushes and watched it, a huge horse emerging seared and whole from the sun’s eye and passing … Continue reading →

This is a portion of the journal I kept for the trip to Belisze with Geoffrey, Graham and Ethan Newby to celebrate my seventieth birthday. A Permit morning.   We motor out for half an hour to the edge of mangrove … Continue reading →

I rolled my ankle, breaking a bone in the process and now I am wearing a boot on my right foot. It immobilizes my ankle, and it’s in several parts, a lot of Velcro and some steel braces,  and it takes … Continue reading →

There is a photograph hanging on the wall just above my desk.  It’s a small black and white photograph of six people and a car.  I found the negative when I worked for the Camera Center and I had a … Continue reading →