The snow stood up in drifts around the edges of the frozen pond. Gusts of wind cleaned away huge irregular circles on the surface of the pond, so that, as the sun set behind the scattered hills near the bay,

On certain days I forget why I’m here. Today once again I wrote my husband all my reasons for coming. He encouraged me to come each time I was in doubt. He said that the worst danger for me was a state of vagueness, so I wrote telling him why I had come to the Hotel Henry—my eighth letter on this subject—but with each new letter I strengthen my position. I am reproducing the letter here.

“I love all beauteous things, I seek and adore them...” “No wonder the old grouch got to be such a crab. He was travel tired: footsore, weary and blue.” “Footsore? English shoes really are very well made.

There is a kind of minor writer who is found in a room of the library signing his novel. His index finger is the color of tea, his smile filled with bad teeth. He knows literature, however. His sad bones are made of it.

I SELF PORTRAIT WITH BAY, 1909. Water colour and oil. The National Gallery. Leaves? Body of water? Scent? Misspelled potentate? He is now 137 years old, or 85. Decades fall like wooden

Ludmilla is wearing a purple dress which leaves most of her back exposed. I trace the letters L...O...V...E... on her back, but she fails to respond. She’s not to be trifled with. Love, I ruminate, has become altogether dispensable. I broach her first meeting with Victor.

Ever since I was a kid reading Terry and the Pirates I’ve always dug uniforms. I dug football uniforms, the clash of team colors against each other, and the heavy German uniforms in World War II movies; I dug braid and insignia, Ike jackets were very cool and air force blues. Whenever I drew a picture in school it was of an air force pilot in smart blues with wings and ribbons.

The first time Avram went over the bar everywhere he looked emerald Pacific Ocean was working, except for the sky-firm above all that motion and the cast of blue he imagined one would see on a television 

A taut woman, Edith Leon was of necessity a methodical woman. She could not abide the world to float about her as it chose. Mysteries, ambiguities, exacerbated her. So she retaliated. She marshaled the world into patterns.