Blog

  • Bonne anniversaire

    Today is the second annual birthday of this blog: 369 posts (just over one every two days – a statistically lower rate than last year, but they’re often longer posts now). I remain pleased: this blog is what I want it to be, a support for writing, a communicative device, a casual map of my…

  • Ostern in Stuttgart (III)

    [A somewhat delayed continuation of my tales of being in hospital; third of perhaps four or five parts. Hey, it amuses me.] [March 24 – 27, 2008] Terrible days (Monday/Tuesday) It’s hard to explain the slightly crazed, exhausted misery of the two days, nearly three, after I was taken out of intensive care. There is,…

  • Summer

    The first day with a forecast of 70°, and with the east window thermometer showing 75° (my neighborhood is always warmer than the forecast – I think the weather station must be near the river – though, unhappily, the coming week will drop back down to 59° or so): I laid on a lawn chair…

  • Babette

    I have been reading Isak Dinesen’s stories for two or three days, marveling as always at how beautifully they are written, at how rich they are – like everyone I wish there were more of course, but they probably wouldn’t be so layered and subtle if she had written them much faster. This afternoon I…

  • Restless spring

    Five or six days of feeling better. No longer so weak or ill… and it’s spring outside. But not writing. Nor really working, in any way, not even going through old papers to throw them out. Some fragmentary gestures towards completing things. Perhaps if I at least finished writing about my hospital stay: not important,…

  • For Vanessa: Reflections on Rubinstein

    [A memorial concert was held for Vanessa Knights last Saturday, May 3, a bit more than thirteen months after her death at the age of 38. I gave the following speech, which includes excerpts from a book first published in 1985 and translated in 1989.] If you’ll allow me, I’m going to tell you about…

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