This n' That

So we're going to have snow — maybe — this Friday or Saturday. Exciting to speculate about, but I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen actual snow, that is, not hail, once since we moved here 35 years ago. I was working on Sansome, downtown, the 19th floor or something like that. Standing at the window, I could see fat flakes, big and moist as kisses go by the plate glass, but their love was gone before they hit the ground.

Funny writing here. I'm beginning to believe I have no readers, or almost none. Ever since Robert stopped posting, all his fans stopped coming by. I know I'm not as erudite as he is. I see things from my own narrow view. But not having to worry about people reading this is also a sort of freedom. Who cares what I say here?

So here goes: Why do people crow about Pushcart nominations? They're nice, but unless they actually turn into a prize, who cares? Don't most of us get nominated year after year?

This is a photo of my Valentine's Day roses. I took it  a day or so ago, but they are still lovely and give me a lot of pleasure.

Yes, I am running out of steam. Maybe I'll write more later.

Late Night Thoughts

It's no secret that I've been reading a lot of fiction lately, finding genre fiction (detective stories) freeing in a way that television fails at, and good fiction, the likes of Munroe, Stroud, Baker, Moore, to be almost as skin-tinglingy perfect as poetry. I read mostly at night. Though I'm unemployed and my day is embarrassingly free, I try to fill it with purposeful actions: looking at job postings, sending out résumés and submissions — okay, and Facebook. But reading in bed has its drawbacks. Sometimes I'm so excited by what I read, I enter into a mental conversation with the writer that keeps me awake. The conversation may take the form of phrases to post here. At least three times lately, I've written volumes of such pillowtalk in my head.

Last night, reading the Birds of America story by Lorrie Moore called "Agnes of Iowa," I came upon this: "Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else …" and I thought, that's why she writes stories, that's the reason to be a writer! To not have to choose — or anyway, to have, in some measure the arrangement and the something else as well. Maybe that isn't what she meant, but it works for me.

Oh yes: found a newspaper cutout — not even a coupon, just a picture — of BumbleBee Chunk Light Tuna In Water — stuck in my Lorrie Moore book, from the library. How perfect!