Well, I got the crabgrass dug out of the front sidewalk--a hot and boring job made better by the fence-building guys working across the street, who were blasting Johnny Cash all afternoon. And then, at the art opening in the evening, I was accosted by an unknown woman. For a moment I thought I must have met her in a class or something and was wracking my brains, until she demanded: "Who does your hair?" I stammered out the name of the woman who cuts it, but what I really wanted to admit is "First, I jam a garden hat on it. Then I sweat a lot."

The opening was crowded and fun, and then the poets all trudged over to Elise Gabberd's reading at a downtown bookstore. Elise writes the "On Poetry" column for the New York Times and has published essays in the big magazines, but she also happens to be a friend of one of our poets, so the two had a staged conversation together about Elise's new essay collection. That was fun too, and in a conversation afterward it turned out that Elise had read my book about rereading, The Vagabond's Bookshelf, which was a shock. Also I was able to have a conversation with her about Updike's Rabbit novels, which hardly anyone I know has read/loved to the degree that I do. So all of that was exciting, and now I will read Elise's book on the bus to New York and maybe we can keep talking about novels and rereading when I'm done. I'm always hopeful. And sometimes those hopes work out: thanks to Ivy Compton-Burnett's novels, I met the excellent novelist Tom Rayfiel, who is practically the only other writer I know who reads in any way approaching the way I do--constantly, obsessively, randomly, repeatedly, giddily. [Too many adverbs. Sorry.]

Today I've got to get myself ready to leave home--do laundry, run errands, pack, water the garden, etc. Ahead I've got a zoom fest in the afternoon with my Poetry Lab pals, and then an evening with Tom, and then tomorrow morning I'll be writing to you from the bus, on my way to the metropolis. I am ready for an outing. The editing project is done, the proofreading is done, the crabgrass chore is done, and I will embark with a new book to read and no work responsibilities for four whole days. Baseball! Art museums! Beer! Chatter! Restaurants! Young people! Old friends! Wandering around aimlessly! I can't wait.