Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” ❦ Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking: “. . . the mind is also a landscape of sorts and . . . walking is one way to traverse it. A […]
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On the Altars of Attention
Looking at the sculpture of Louise Nevelson. I spent an hour Sunday morning, while the house was quiet, turning the pages of—paying my respects to is probably a better description—a book that looks something looks more like a totem that a volume. Large and nearly square (it’s roughly 12×13 inches), it’s bound in deep black […]
Walking and Thinking
A path to ideas on a walk in the woods. I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau I walk to most of my ideas, and walking, I’d wager, is the most ingenious instrument in a writer’s toolbox. […]
Under the Spell of Sentences
On writing—and on writing about writing that’s a joy to read. I spend an inordinate amount of my waking life turning sentences around. Come to think of it, it’s not just my waking hours: I often fall out of slumber in the middle of the night to find a phrase tickling my mind. In such […]
Commonplace Book 01.30.20
January 30, 2020 From the aphorisms of Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort: “All that I’ve learned I’ve forgotten; the little that I still know, I’ve guessed.” ❦ Marcel Proust on anticipation, from Within a Budding Grove: “I continued to wait, alone or with Swann, and often with Gilberte, come in to keep us company. The arrival of […]
Snow Prayer
A Poem The eye, benighted by electric switches,Is caught by a window where snow bewitchesThe weary melancholy that nerved the week. I stop for a moment on my way to bedTo view the framed landscape, which snow has bledOf every discretion assumed by sight. How meekly the soul’s imperfect tenseSurrenders to snow’s soft violence,Letting go […]
Face to Face with John Singer Sargent
An intimate viewing at the Morgan Library. I was in the Cleveland airport a couple of months ago when I got a call from one of my oldest friends. Being old enough now that most of my old friends are in fact old, picking up an unexpected call is always shadowed with a little trepidation, […]
Some Words on Walls
A walk in the woods. Is a stone the earth’s utterance? I’ve been pondering stone walls quite a bit recently, and the thought that stones are akin to words keeps coming back to me. For stones rest embedded in the enduring culture of their geology in the same way that words wait quietly in the […]
8 More Books Nobody’s Talking About
Fiction of far-flung truths and close-to-home consequences: a holiday gift list for off-the-beaten track readers. Making a gift of a book speaks of our desire for significant conversation, something beyond the daily round of “What’s new?” It’s an emblem of respect, and often special affection, between giver and recipient. By my lights, at least, such […]
Charles Dickens: Destiny by the Word
Charles Dickens may well be the most ingenious author in English literature. The energy of his inventiveness gave birth to a gallery of characters — from Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge — whose lives have overflowed the boundaries of his books to become permanent fixtures in the collective imagination. So strong is the shadow cast […]