Western Vermont, just before dawn. I am being importuned by a hangry tuxedo cat as I wait for the spaniels to return from their yard outing. In the living room, lanky young men sprawl in sleeping bags. At any moment they will erupt into life and this note to you will end. In a few hours we will all splinter off into our separate directions, but for the moment the shape of the world (when awake) is elbows and crazy hair and wisecracks.

I've done no reading since I've been here; the only writing has been these dabs to you. Instead, I've been washing dishes and dicing fish and unearthing leftover ham and clearing tables and so on and so on. Eleven people in a house requires constant attention to infrastructure.

Yet now, suddenly, quiet. Even the cat has vamoosed, and I am sitting at the kitchen counter, alone with myself, listening to the drip of time.