In good news, Paul received a Christmas present from his girlfriend yesterday, and you should have seen his face when he opened the package. Somehow, she'd managed to acquire a beautiful scuffed game-day baseball . . . signed by the great David Ortiz himself. Paul was nearly in tears.

And in other good news, the temperature was 50 degrees yesterday, with a warm breeze whipping over the bay. No wonder the Victorians liked to send sick relatives to the beach to convalesce. Lifting my face into that wind was a joy.

I've been reading A. S. Byatt's novel The Biographer's Tale. In it she reprints a translated snippet of Ibsen's poetry. I'm not sure where it's originally from, but this is what she quotes:

He turned his ship's
Prow from the north,
Seeking the trail
Of brighter gods.

The snow-land's beacons
Quenched in the sea.
The fauns of the seashore
Stilled his longing.

He burned his ships.
Blue smoke drifted
Like a bridge's span
Towards the north.

To those snow-capped huts
From the hills of the south
There rides a rider
Every night.