Noted
“Where are you trying to go?” London, Summer Diary, 2015, continued
I turn to see a tiny woman about my age, dressed like me, sporting large sunglasses and clunky sneakers. Since I am a short person
August 4, 2015
Friendship
FRIENDSHEEP: A Summer Romance
Sometimes you just have to give in, admitting, say, you’re just a dumb tourist and buy the tchotchkes on offer. This summer I traveled in
July 27, 2015
Friendship
For Patricia Yaeger
“I wanted to fill my elegy with light of all kinds. But death makes us stingy. There is nothing more to be expended on that,
June 22, 2015
Friendship
A friend commits suicide
“We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each piece, each moment, plays its own game,” Montaigne writes. “And there is
June 15, 2015
Cancer
Chemo Renoir
If only we lived in another century. Our rolls of fat would make us desirable and happy. You might think, as I did, that chemo
June 5, 2015
Cancer Gadfly
Cancer Gadfly: Walking Back and Working Around
One of the rare pleasures of old age is observing new words jump into circulation. Or appear to jump. We might just have been nodding.
March 30, 2015
Cancer Gadfly
Cancer Gadfly: My Envyometer
There’s lots of writing about cancer―memoirs, graphic and prose, blogs, narratological and anthropological studies, science reporting. Most of the writing is bad, by which I
March 9, 2015
Noted
The perils of pencils
It’s been impossible not to follow and mourn the crisis in Paris. The attacks have compelled as much attention as the events of 9/11, when
January 10, 2015
Cancer Gadfly
Cancer Gadfly: Nothing but blue skies…
Little did I dream while riding on the back of a black Triumph motorcycle in Paris that several decades later I would be invited to
December 9, 2014
Cancer Gadfly
What me worry?: Living with the C. Word.
Having cancer is bad enough without being urged to enjoy your diagnosis, believe you can will it away through your state of mind. And it’s
December 2, 2014
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.