“It takes one durable person to believe that fantasy is as potent as reality. Seeing too far into others’ lives can make you cynical.”

“. . . I used to think I lacked confidence. Now I think I knew I had nothing much yet to write about. Or not perspective enough to know what was there.”

Let’s us celebrate small town beauticians.

All the women ones and some of them kind, particular and tasteful boys. Godsends, the entire curling bunch. Underpaid, they do more local good than many doctors I could name.

 

Find a little yellow side-street house. Put an older woman in it. Dress her in that tatty favorite robe, pull her slippers up before the sink, have her doing dishes, gazing nowhere — at her own backyard. Gazing everywhere. Something falls outside, loud.

On dairy cream nowadays, they write “Best if used before . . .” Well, honey, my last safe-fresh year was, oh, around nineteen and fifty-one.

In the shady northeast corner of the park, where vines have overcome the water fountains, and evergreens grow, rangy and unkempt as in the depths of Vronsky Forest, I came upon two children doing something very naughty. I had wandered to this most rustic corner of the Common seeking quietude and relief from the dogs recently permitted by a foolish ordinance to run free without leashes in the park. 

“Spencer had the gift for infusing social situations with a bullfight’s fatality.”