watched disney's oscar winner nature doc water birds (1952), each graceful in hunting pose. but i'd want pet bat, only to call self a childless batman
enjoyed future senator franken's introduction of the grateful dead
good evening ladies and gentlemen, we're the comedy team of franken and davis, and we're going to do about an hour of comedy. [boos] hey wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold it, hold it, we've got this deal worked out with the dead where the longer we're on, the less they can play, see? [boos] hey! hey! what? what? you don't want us to do an hour of comedy? [boos] hey listen, if you people don't quiet down, we're going to get off the stage and the band will have to come on. [cheers] what, is that what you people want? [cheers] ok, ladies and gentlemen, the grateful dead!
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...
read the magician by colm toibin
in paraty, if you saw three people, then one was talking and the other two were laughing
burn the poem
he must think that suitable men grow on trees
i grew a long beard listening to it
time went slowly in an unfamiliar place
inflation was being blamed on the winners of the war
and they contained accounts of moments that he treasured but could share with no one. casual glances at young men who had come to his lectures or whom he encountered at a concert. glances that were sometimes reciprocated and then became unmistakable in their intensity. while he enjoyed the homage he received in public and appreciated the large audiences he attracted, it was always these chance meetings, silent and furtive, that he remembered. not to have registered in his diary the message sent by the secret energy in a gaze would have been unthinkable. he wanted that which had been so fleeting to become solid. the only way he knew to make this happen was to write it down. should he have let it pass so that it would have faded completely, this, the story of his life?
perhaps he has written "i am" and is now unsure how he might proceed
no matter how well we paint the face, we struggle to paint hands. if the devil came here now and asked me what i would want in exchange for eternity under his reign i would ask him to let me paint hands, hands that no one would even notice, perfect hands. do novelists have a problem like our problem with hands?
if only einstein would listen to him, things would be different
when i informed him that my husband had won the nobel prize in literature, he shrugged. i did not know that there were people like that in sweden
he knew how to open a pomegranate and fill a bowl with the rich, red seeds. if that was all he had learned from his mother, it would be enough, he thought
'she calls once a day and i take her call once a week,' mrs roosevelt replied
'why did you marry him?'..'of all the possibilities, present, past and future, your father was the least preposterous'
the war is over, but it casts a long shadow
9/19