bel esprit

clonk-clonk
Got myself out to the park this afternoon by 2 p.m. and it was already too hot for a refreshing walk! The raven was high in a still bare tree making noises (they don't "sing") and somewhat annoyed by my presence, but not enough to fly off. These guys are the size of cats and hobbits and I find them endlessly interesting - they're sort of the fearless avian kings of the trees.

sea turtle
found a fine use for the Lorna's sea turtle sport weight yarn - a triangle shawlette that I'm designing as I go along (with bits stolen from here and there). Love, love, the color - so spring (and not quite as lurid as the picture suggests - more seaweed-y/forest-y). I'm drawn to green, color of creativity and renewal!

a favorite read
...the recently published "restored edition" of A Moveable Feast.

There is a forward by Patrick Hemingway (son) and an introduction by Sean Hemingway (grandson), photos, revamped expanded chapters, additional Paris sketches and "fragments" that Hemingway originally wrote for the introduction and ending and then decided not to use (is it fair to include them now?) The original paperback has been a favorite of mine for decades and I still dip into the 1964 edition that's been with me since then (when I was 20-something and my 48 year old son was a baby...oh my!). I love the book and like so many other readers through the years I have been influenced by Hemingway's visions of Paris in the 1920's.

In those days it was no disgrace to be crazy,
but, on the other hand, you got no credit for it.
                E.H.

the north country

i

It happened overnight. We weren't paying attention. Suddenly notice that up here in the north country, the apricot blossoms are out!

The tree is tucked behind a sheltering adobe wall. It's roots reach down into a deep place where we know there's water because it once flooded the entire driveway right up to the doorway! But the cruel month of April has the final say. Will the blossoms freeze once again? In the 8 or 10 years that we've had this tree, it blossoms magnificently each year and when the blossoms are at their peak, a deathly freeze descends -- and they are gone. Only once in all that time have we had an apricot harvest - and it was so abundant that I preserved 15 jars of jam! Feeling confident at the time that the tree finally took hold and this was the beginning of annual harvests, I gave most of the jam away. My neighbor advised, "keep them" and now I understand why. He's lived here his whole life, his mother was a master jam-maker and his family has utilized the land for more than a hundred years in the most organic way possible. "It's a challenge," he said.  But hope springs eternal in spring. The meadowlark seem to think so. He calls out melodically all day long. And so far spring seems to be arriving earlier than usual, it's warmer for this time of year...so...maybe...

Meanwhile, skiers are still careening down mountains, although I hear that the snow is draggy and mushy in places and certain avalanche-prone areas are closed off as the base gets softer. I think there's only another week of skiing left before the Ski Valley closes down. It's an environmental impact thing, allowing the season to take hold without disturbances from brightly clad humans on sticks.

the gods' word

on its own
Despite clear and firm intentions over coffee this morning, the lovely sunny 65 degree day developed its own momentum. I'd planned to get down to my desk early, work for several hours, maybe take a walk or go into town. Instead, my morning was broken up almost immediately with three long phone calls and a poetry editing request later on. Before I knew it, it was nearly noon as I drove into town for the mail and a breezy walk through the Overland Sheepskin compound. I was heading toward the tea shop, but got diverted by the waterfall flowing again, and other sights so familiar, yet so new each season.

Aspens aren't green yet, but they're so magnificent, who cares? And the old truck survived another winter and is looking as picturesque as ever against Taos Mountain.

one small step at a time
I finished the Lorna's Laces Limited Edition "Breaking Dawn" socks I'd put aside a couple of months ago because I was bored. But now they're done and fun. Can see self wearing them looking like a Dr. Suess character.

Poetry sessions editing a fine writer's book manuscript have been extremely valuable for me. Although I can edit my own non-fiction work pretty well, I find it almost impossible to edit my poetry - proximity, familiarity?  I don't call myself a poet and may never reach that exalted level, but now I can at least recognize junk!

But beneath the pleasantness of this lovely spring day, when I notice that trees have sprouted half-opened blossoms overnight, is the sad memory of my dearest friend's death two years ago on this day. Back then it was a bitter, cold, end of winter, the ground still covered in a sheath of white as far as the eye could see. We joked nervously that perhaps spring wouldn't come after all and we understood why ancient people made sacrifices to appease the gods of the seasons. A full silver moon rose in a deep indigo sky and, oddly, someone in the distance was drumming. The only color that night was the red blanket draped over her, as if for warmth, as she was wheeled out of the house for the last time. I will never forget that moment, nor will I ever forget you Gayle. Last night I dreamed that you were painting in that other dimension. The work was wonderful, color and pen and ink, and you were having an important exhibition. Cheers!

Awed by her splendor

Stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
                   when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver
                     Sappho (trans. Mary Barnard)

barnyard tizzy

This curious couple greeted me as I walked from my neighbor Lesley's house this morning. She is an award-winner and designer of the SOMOS anthology that I edit - and she just happens to conveniently live at the beginning of my dirt road, making our design meetings eminently convenient for both of us. Since last year when we last worked together she's added these two friendly goats to her family. They live a privileged goat life in a cozy barn area and I often see them picturesquely sitting in a sunny spot in their open doorway as I drive past. Since I was on foot this time they came to the fence to see me off, bleating their wavery greetings. They share their protected-from-coyotes area with colorful roosters and hens. How perfect is nature!

I'd love to have a yarn palette with their colors. Will have to talk to friend Joan who has begun hand-dying her own wool. She has a bold vision and might like the challenge.  Meanwhile, she showed me some beginning! results using Kool Aid and food coloring.

Years ago I dyed sock yarns in a crockpot using Kool Aid. It was easy, not very exciting (too pastel-y), but the resulting knitted socks thrilled their recipients. Before they were gone, my granddaughter noticed that the socks smelled of their flavors so she put tags on each pair that read "sniff me".  And once, with a few other women, I spent a breezy summer day outdoors dyeing. We used indigo (expensive), cochineal (bugs!),  onion skins (no prob), yarrow (for ochre), other naturals. We drove out in a caravan to the mesa home/studio of a master-dyer mutual acquaintance and spent the day stirring colorful bubbling cauldrons pots. I remember that time as one of the small major pleasures of my life. I loved bringing my very own skeins home to hang up to dry while anticipating the way I would use them in projects.

As much as I liked the whole episode, I haven't been compelled to do it again. As I've noted before re spinning, I just don't want to add another obsession to my already over-obsessive scheduled life! Although... I am tempted to try the crockpot thing again using some of the new vivid food colorings Joan told me about...

mondo italiano

Another little Italian cafe has recently opened in Taos. It's called mondo italiano (doesn't anyone use capital letters anymore?). I tried to take a photo outside, but the sun was too bright in the huge noontime sky.

When I first heard the name mondo italiano, I suddenly also heard in my mind that old 1950's Rosemary Clooney song, Mambo Italiano, and couldn't get the silly lyrics out of my head... you mixed-up Siciliano....all you Calabrese do the mambo like-a crazy...mambo ITALIANO! (if any of you out there also remember this song, it's now in your head too and, believe me when I tell you, it's hard to remove). However, the song notwithstanding, the restaurant has good food, nice casual atmosphere, lots of red and white striped tablecloths and curtains, wine and beer, good prices. The owners (I'm told they're New York and Las Vegas Italian-Americans) have taken an extremely nondescript vacant store in an uninteresting strip "center" and transformed it into the current "coolest place to eat" in Taos. This appellation is from acquaintances I ran into when I was there for lunch with two friends. I went back in the evening with Ron for a light dinner and to introduce him to the place. He holds the long-standing position in our family of Supreme Judge of Italian Restaurant Food. His qualifications are derived solely from his Sicilian mother's cooking, which was great, but different from my Neapolitan mother's cooking (we argue a lot about meatballs). During both visits all the tables were filled and an attractive woman who I took to be one of the owners was smiling broadly. Taos is a quirky place, though, and those of us who have lived here for a long time still have images in our heads of wonderful cafes and restaurants long gone. We wish mondo italiano lots of garlic and long-term success.

After lunch, we went to Irene's house to try on hats from her collection to wear to the tea party  (!) planned to celebrate one of them in April. More about that later. Suffice it to say that I had a hell of a fun time with my two 80-something friends yesterday afternoon.

plenitude

what makes me happiest these days? 
I drove to Santa Fe yesterday with lots of sun, temps warming up, car windows open, music. Alone in the solitude of the open road. A superficial trip based more upon the need to fly alone than a substantial reason for a 170 mile round trip. I had run out of my precious Kiehls Ultra moisturizing cream and the closest place to buy it here is in a tiny salon in Santa Fe. I could have ordered it online, but what fun is that? I got back in time to meet with my writer friends at 4 p.m. We spent the next two hours writing, reading aloud, drinking decaf coffee. All of us a little tired from our various activities that day. Three skiers, a Reiki master, me. We confess to each other that this configuration of new friends is something we look forward to during the two week stretch in between meetings. As soon as the ski season is over we'll plan to meet earlier - which is fine with me because by 4 o'clock I'm ready to pack it in and pour a glass of wine. What else makes me happy?

Oh yes, new yarn like bouquets of spring flowers.  So full of possibilities. For now, I keep them within sight, no stashing them in a tote or box. The colors send me, and I'm in Cancun, Cape Cod, San Francisco, Naragansett. What they eventually morph into is still a mystery. Like the skein of bohemian hand spun, hand dyed wool that I traded with my friend Linda several months ago. She'd bought too much of it at the Wool Festival and was happy to pass some of it on. I looked at it for months. So pretty. So bohemian (what does that even mean these days?). Swatched a couple of projects that didn't work out. And then, just as I began to think I might have to pass it on, it told me what it should be: a simple triangular scarf. No fancy lace patterns or cables, just something to show off the handspun hand-dyed yarn. I began and it seemed to knit itself through several old movies and some early morning knitting. It was a meditative exercise with realistic expectations - or perhaps none at all.

No drama. Nothing to write home about. Just a smallish bandanna-sized scarf. I finished it tonight and, unblocked, brought it outside as the sun was just about to drop behing the western horizon. 

and so on with the season's mysteries...
my neighbor is burning the dried fields in early mornings before the winds begin, preparing the land for new growth, getting ready to meet up with the mayordomo and the helpers who clear out the acequias, let the water flow, release snowmelt from the highest peaks as it rushes through ancient paths. I warn Ron to check the ditch that runs alongside his studio, be sure it's clear of debris so there isn't a recurrence of the flood that happened two years ago - water happily finding its angle of repose under the door and into his studio, flowing like a sweet deep stream, flooding the floor, paintings and books floating, ruined. Me shouting," oh my god, oh my god!" him shouting, "I'm going to sue someone," our friend and neighbor arriving, ordering, "get brooms and mops," shutting off the flow at the acequia madre and then helping us clean up. The floor is still slightly buckled, the insurance company didn't pay because we're not in a flood zone and they'd never heard of an acequia. Spring. Lovely spring. Not a flower blooming up here yet, but a pair of mountain bluebirds showed up on the deck this morning. He all vivid blue, his breast not rusty red yet, she's all pale and colorless, the mother, the female, both of them looking for a suitable place to build a nest. It's time to toss into the air the bits and pieces of yarn that I've accumulated that will end up lining birds' nests.

The bird has come
to give the light:
from each trill of his
water is born.
                  (Pablo Neruda, Spring, first stanza)

kinds of celebration

This lovely man, Manuel Archuleta, celebrated his 97th birthday a couple of days ago. He's been a master rancher, farmer, and irrigator for more than 8 decades. His land adjoins ours and through the years he has become a familiar figure in the distance with hat, shovel, wellies. Although he has slowed down a bit and isn't out there anymore every day, in all seasons, he's still going strong. We wish him many more happy birthdays. (The photos of him were taken one summer morning a year or so ago at the young age of 95!).

The Taos Acequia Association honored him recently by adapting his son's painting for their logo. Prints are available at the Des Montes Gallery and I was thrilled to go home with one today.

a writer's cakes
I drove through raining mud when I left the house yesterday afternoon for a meeting/tea at a friend's house in town. The wind blew in gusts and gales (we used to call them hurricanes back east), and filled the air with dust and dirt. When rain suddenly pelted down they combined and produced muddy rain! What a mess! However, once we arrived at Bonnie's place, all was well. In the spirit of Proust, she baked madeleines for her writer guests.

I had ceased...to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours...  (Proust, Remembrance of Things Past)

Tea, coffee, lots of words accompanied the luscious treats! (one of us was knitting, too - no, it wasn't me). Bonnie (who won the Gourmand International Award in Paris last week) made two kinds of madeleines: chocolate (help!) and lemon/almond (oh my!).

While we sat at her cozy dining table, we didn't notice the weather getting nasty outside. When we left around 7 p.m. (each with a few take-home cakes), thick wet snow was falling heavily. Visibility turned to zero as we each carefully drove home. I don't know about the others, but first I divided half of my shell-cakes with Ron (after all...) and polished off the rest with a glass of chilled Chardonney. sigh!

This morning we awakened to six inches of wet snow and lots of odd stuff, chairs, sculpture, garbage cans, cardboard, a blanket, strewn all over the place. Snow is already melting. Only thing is...now we'll have to wash the second floor windows - they're splattered with mud.

of gender & weather

what season, please?
The cottonwood trees are magnificent in their pre-spring color (shades of September), while the trees around them are as bare as January - unless you look closely and notice tiny swelling buds at tips of branches. Yesterday's 70 degree temperatures sent all of us into spring fever restlessness. I dawdled at my desk, went for a walk,  wandered in and out of shops showing new spring stuff and succumbed to the lure of a gauzy scarf in a lovely grape hyacinth blue. Which, today, I have wrapped around my neck as winds begin to howl around the house again and the temperature is already dropping. Yes, we're still expecting snow and cold for the next three days. And although the sun is shining brightly, there are signs in the sky.

"I want a world that matches my life inside and out" 
(Linda Gregg)

Each year Taos designates a theme that gets loosely incorporated into various ongoing events from January to December. 2012 is the year of Remarkable Women of Taos. It began with the Agnes Martin centennial celebration at the Harwood Museum. Events will cover every aspect and definition of a woman's creative life. Women of all ages, levels of accomplishment, service, are being honored.  I have been invited to do a reading at the Remarkable Women of Words project in April and I'm excited to be a small part of that day's events. This Taos theme has actually even been mentioned in the New York Times, much to the delight of the organizers.

All this talk about women, the positives (there are many), and the recent extremist media harangues, have got me revisiting feminist issues. I have called myself a feminist since the late 1960's and early 70's when we were demanding equal rights on all fronts. I still recall with horror some of the comments men made when the subject came up at cocktail parties. One so-called male friend swooped me up and threatened to throw me into his backyard pool because of my audacious views. I won't repeat what I said to him as he marched toward the water, but suffice to say that I used words I'd never used before in public and he quickly put me back on my feet.

(original reproduction 36"x42", Homage-Picasso by Ron Marchese Ciancio)

    
In recent years, younger generations of women seem to hear the word as a negative. I'm hoping that as our culture's barely hidden sexism reveals itself again, those young women (who take their free choices for granted) will raise their voices as their mothers and grandmothers before them did. I certainly can't address the whole issue with its many facets, but I sense a groundswell in my small world, as local high school students write and perform with confidence, gritty no-holds-barred poetry. Cheers to those young poets (female and male) who turned a few heads inside-out at a recent slam.

If one woman were to tell
the truth about her life
the world would split
open.
              Muriel Rukeyser

out of kilter?

not so fast!
It definitely feels like spring these days. Hot sun, moderate winds, lots of chirping in the still bare trees, windows blessedly open, jackets not required outdoors, horses calmly munching new grass and the hay tossed to them, lying in the morning sun instead of huddling together with unmelted snow on their backs. There's a dearth of green, but the cottonwood limbs are yellow and a couple of plowed fields are already green. A rancher neighbor five acres away is plowing his fields and the distant drone of the tractor is the sound of change.

However (there's always a however around here), the biggest (and last) snowstorm of the season is expected to hit us by Sunday and stay around for a few days bringing cold temps and lots of accumulation. In today's newspaper I read that March is a month when late winter storms come barreling in (I knew that) out of the Bering Sea! (I did not know that) - roaring down the west coast unabated and arriving here a few days later.  Isn't the Bering Strait south of the polar circle? Alaska? Russia? uh,oh.

socks for dancing
finished the latest pair of Alpaca Sox. Super soft and warm. Great jewel colors fit for a winter sock hop. I am looking forward to using the new colors Classic Elite has come out with this spring for Sox. They're vivid and unsubtle - which is the way socks should be. Butterscotch. Lipstick. Cran-Orange Gelato. Yes!

watching and waiting
Long poetry editing session today with two poets at one of their homes. We drank good black coffee and worked our way through a handful of poems being prepared for publication.  This was a second meeting and we'll need at least one or two more. I'll post additional information about this upcoming book as we get closer to the final manuscript and it's in the hands of the publisher. Meanwhile, we were guarded by poetry mascot, Max.

What magic denial
shall my life utter
to bring itself forth?
                            (Denise Levertov, Living Alone (III), last stanza)

out of the dark

 spring snow (on Ron's sculpture)
A few flurries late last night. We ignored them and anticipated the abundance of light starting today. Three inches and the sun comes right out to meet it, melt it, filling deep watery invisible caves that run beneath our dry land and fill our wells. Big blue holes in the white sky begin to appear. Steady trickle of snowmelt off the roof accompanies morning coffee. Frankly, this is the only time of year I feel positive about snowfall.

a minor conclusion

The Hand Maiden Casbah Colonnade shawl is finished! Worked on it exclusively for the last few days and finished this morning. It's a winner. Blocking will happen later if I can get the long table downstairs cleared of stacks of pages and other stuff. Why is it that no matter how many lovely long surfaces I have at my disposal, there's never enough room.

under the last snow
green shoots are stirring
with faint wet whispers

(thanks to Richard Wright's haiku for inspiring me)

the outsider always within

a photograph is a secret about a secret
I heard that sentence somewhere recently. Coy, but possibly true. True enough to trigger musings on a gray day in our mountains, neither winter nor spring, as if color had been blown away by the winds. As an antidote, I look through photo files for secrets, color, and find other graynesses. Lovely memories from a few months ago.

Trying to appreciate gray. It's soft edges. Cashmere sweater skies, a rest between white and black, ashes and sand on a beach. Never one hundred percent, as the touch of red in the sandpiper's beak and a faded yellow edge around a jellyfish near a rope fragment, defy dullness.

antidote to changing seasons' gloom? yarn defiance!
I'm working on my first project with Hand Maiden Casbah and am madly, irrevocably, in love with it. The delicious colors and the morsel of cashmere (only 10%) is enough to make me tipsy. As I work on another Little Colonnade shawlette (Stephen West), the yarn blooms in my hands and I can't wait until this garment rests on my shoulders. Normally I'm a process knitter and tend to let go, without qualms, most of what I finish knitting, but not this time. The pattern is easy, the result immense. I still love the one I knitted in northern Pacific beach colors (mostly gray) and wear often.  I'll wear this one, too.

The problem with a gray day, of course, is that all I'm motivated to do is knit, jot stuff in my notebooks, read some poetry, drink tea. Nice work if you can get it. But must force self to desk now, having had too much fun blogging and playing with yarn.

call it loneliness
that deep, beautiful color
no one can describe
over these dark mountains
                    (excerpt, Zen poet Jakuren, 1139-1202)

modes of enlightenment

scatterings of help
I sometimes drop the balls I'm juggling, just like everyone else, and turn into an impatient, stressed-out being. Until (and if) I remember to stop, take some breaths, accept difficult times, let go of the things that keep me suffering, and try to be more of a help than a hindrance to those around me. It helps to have new yarn called Sea Turtle Dreams (Lorna's Laces Limited Edition Shepherd Sport) with all its possibilities. It really evokes thoughts of the sea and the creatures within it.

It also helps to leave the house, my desk and its associated responsibilities, and go to a cafe. Taos has a dearth of urban pleasures that some of us miss, but we do have an ever-changing, always abundant plethora of independent coffee shops. There's no Starbucks here, but there is Wired Cafe, Taos Cow, Elevation, Manila Cafe, Coffee Stop, Caffe Tazza. Others combine casual fare with coffee shop atmosphere. There were other cafes that disappeared through the years. I still miss Casa Fresen, Turquoise Teapot, Cafe Loka. All are, and have been, good places to write and many books have been written in them. As a cafe writer I have had to learn to turn off distracting sounds. Bury my nose in a notebook (I don't bring the laptop to these places) and just work. But I do get distracted and the distractions end up in my notes.

monday afternoon
The friendly koi in the indoor pond, my small round table just a few inches from it, my purse could fall right in, startle the orange and silver one who seems to surface just to get my attention, whose picture I take with my small blue camera that just flashed low battery. The crinkled faded paper sign above the pond warns us to not throw things at the koi (who would do that?) because they are "very shy and will hide for weeks after any traumas".

The three women at the next table talk about enlightenment and the New Jersey Turnpike. They are about to leave, wish each other "good dreams", as the curious koi, not traumatized at all by my picture-taking, swim back and forth in silver and yellow and orange fishy enlightenment.

In a month all the frozen fountains and small ponds outside will be melodic and fluid again.
In a month it won't seem so odd to hear a robin's chirping.
In a month it will be difficult to separate the robin's voice from chattering finches, sparrows, the insistent red-winged blackbird.
In a month, will the lilacs fail again?

this time

We all like a Sunday afternoon coffee break. As I sat at an inside table at Taos Cow, writing, I glanced up and saw this beautiful (large) creature sitting at a table outside! He didn't seem to have coffee or a notebook, but was definitely people-watching.

it was March third
Our days are warming up again and the sun is a welcome element changing moods from low to inexplicable brief joyful moments. As Jane Kenyon wrote, "it could have been otherwise". 

I receive news about my daughter's good friend Don. A man who had a difficult life, but also a heart of enormous proportions, an old soul. He was found dead outside the place where he lived, on his way home. A diabetic seizure was determined as the cause. I got to know him over several years whenever I visited back east. Last June with the baby's Christening arrangements and the big reception, while the rest of the family was running around stressed out and snappish, he (as an honorary member) was a quiet, calming, and helpful influence. He was a sad man too. We recognized that.

"be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" (Philo of Alexandria)

Sometimes I can believe that there are fallen angels. The ones that choose to be human, can't adjust, can't return. Maybe he was one. More and more scientists believe that we have a soul energy that never dies. I'd like to believe that too.

It was March third I came outside and saw
for the first time the buttonwood tree with last year's
leaves hanging in the wind like little hearts
and one or two crazy birds going mad with choices
in the hideous leftover snow and the slippery mud.
March the third. the branches were more a silver
than either green or tan, there was no fuzz/yet.

            Gerald Stern (Sycamore, from "This Time")

how it unwinds

Trip to post office today yielded one skein of hand-dyed Hand Maiden Casbah in "safari". The blend of merino with a touch of cashmere is soooo soft. I've wanted to try it for some time and finally ordered it, hoping I'd like the color. I love it - it feels so right for the season. Can't wait to find out what this luxe yarn wants to be.

March mitts
Until then I'll work on the next pair of mitts in soft English wool (Marion Foale). I've given myself the whole month to complete them. This yarn shows off the cables and lace pattern very well.

extreme winds
I know there has been some cruel weather around the country recently so my problem with wind seems wimpy by comparison. However, it seems I'm susceptible again (not since childhood) to strong cold wind blowing in my ears and causing stinging little pains and lightheadedness bordering on dizziness. Drained of energy yesterday as a result, I surrendered to dozing and reading while the wind howled outside and Spike wouldn't leave my side, stubbornly refusing to go out. Feel fine today, but my head is now filled with nostalgic thoughts.
    
form and content of nostalgia
I reread Pete Hamill's wonderful 2004 book Downtown: My Manhattan. He defines nostalgia in a way quite different from the usual meaning. Rather, it's a nostalgia based "in the abiding sense of loss that comes from the simple fact of continuous change". Nostalgia can erupt any time by seeing or hearing something from the past, but that to dwell upon it without cease would be to live as a bore. "New York," he writes, "teaches you to get over almost everything".

Hamill is a few years older than me, but much of what he captures of his youth in the 1950s and early 1960s, coincides with my memories and experiences of Manhattan at that time. The book is much more than a memoir. It is a blend of city history, myths, places, people, flows like a novel and informs like a guidebook. Hamill is a brilliant writer.

He mentions at some point those Books I Thought I'd Read When Young. I could relate. Who remembers all of them? the books from the Bookmobile, the NY Public Library, the Parkchester Library? The paperbacks I read on the subway to and from school and work. The ones bought at grade school Scholastic book sales. My mother always gave me enough money (not much in the olden days) to buy one novel and one classic. Hamill says about classics that they feel like new books when reading them for the second [or third] time, after having lived a life. So now I'm reading Huckleberry Finn on my Kindle! (He said in an interview that he reads it once a year!). I read it when I was ten and Shirley across the street loaned me her copy. She wore glasses (I didn't) and I loved the way she pushed them back on her nose when they slipped. I convinced myself (and tried to convince my mother) that I needed glasses.  Alas, eye tests at school always came out 20/10. I finally needed reading glasses  in my 30's and they were more nuisance than magic.

Certain tiny restaurants in the Village, or wanderings through the Metropolitan Museum, or trips to the Five Spot to hear Thelonious Monk. We could remember a time when we were so young that we thought the things we loved would last forever.
                                                                               Pete Hamill