Diary
What’s in a name?
A few days ago I received an email from a high school friend I haven’t seen for many years. She said that on a recent trip to Paris
If Emily Dickinson tweeted…
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you―Nobody―Too? (c. 1861) Despite Dickinson’s well-known gift for concision, these lines and the ones that follow in the poem, suggest that Dickinson
Is Twenty-Seven Old?
At some point in the interesting new movie Frances Ha someone declares: “Twenty-seven is old.” In his enthusiastic review film critic A.O. Scott observes: “while that may in
The Compliment
When friends learn you are in treatment for cancer, naturally they prefer not to believe it. They want to cheer you up. “But you look great!” So how
Transitions
“It’s not the moves, it’s between the moves.” This was one of those offhand remarks that has stuck in my mind for at least twenty years. I remember
Am I still that person?
A few weeks ago, my friend and former jogging partner Ellen Sweet sent me this snapshot that she had just discovered while scanning old photographs into her computer.
Brooding
One morning last week when I was walking around the reservoir in Central Park with a friend we came upon these two ducks. The sight stopped us in
Reading the signs of spring in Manhattan
I’ve been trying to decide whether my negative feelings about being back in New York after a month at sea, well, by the sea, should be described as
Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.