I spent all of yesterday out of the house, much to the disgust of the cat. Today, I'm back to editing, and maybe a yoga class, and prepping for tonight's reading in Hallowell.

My meeting yesterday was on Commercial Street, a busy artery tucked against the Portland waterfront. Shops, wharves, fish merchants, restaurants, kitsch stands, tourists, cruise boats, office workers, homeless people, ferries: the street is always a scene. Also, it's really hard to park there, so I stowed the car about a mile away, at the end of the Eastern Promenade trail (near where I used to live in that apartment that made me cry all the time), and walked into town along the bay. The day was beautiful and bright, the water blue and full of pleasure boats, and I wondered, yet again, why I hated living down here so much. I do enjoy visiting it.

But, really, it seems like someone else's world: all these fancied-up Victorian condos, and steel-n-glass apartment buildings, and giant shiny-wood sailboats, and even a little yacht moored among them like a fat bulldog.

Meanwhile, a woman sleeps alongside the pretty path, huddled up over her backpack, her pants sliding down, her breathing rough.

She's wedged up against a crabapple tree. Probably the crew can't see her from the yacht.