I finally read some this weekend, I’d been on a dry streak, at least as reading goes.  But the weather insisted, with its sun and languour, that I read so I did.  My Kindle iPhone app played a part in this.  I can now run about with one tiny thing in my hand and then decide when I’ve reached the park, lake or luxury resort what I’d like beamed from space for me to read. 

I’m past my “I need a book in hand” years.  I like physical books, yes.  I even have some.  Many.  And I plan to have more, lots more, and buy every last one of them from Sylla, but this access to content is magnificent.  I’m surprised how easy it is to read on my phone.  The Kindle, the actual physical device, I believe won’t stay.  I love mine (and my wonderful mother-in-law, H.) but you can’t compete when it’s as easy, if not easier, to read books on your phone and when the phone does more and costs less. 

I’m reading The Believers right now, Zoe Heller.  She wrote Notes on a Scandal.  It was a movie, I didn’t see it, but her book was first and it was fabulous.  She’s very good. 

I’m in awe of the sun.  It can be so nice when it wants to be.  A. mowed the yard, the sun graced it, and now everything’s different, everything.  Suddenly the house doesn’t need paint (well, not so desperately), Scruffy’s pee hardly shows, the dead things look alive, and there’s a bounce to my step, there is.   

Very Tall Vet saved an impaled cat last week, he’s a healer.  I’m putting a tent in the backyard and hiring him for revivals this summer.  Bring your own impalations, plus drinks.  Good times for all, I promise. 

Are you following me on Twitter?  Well, you should be.  I twitter, you know.  I twitter and I Facebook and two days ago I participated in a poem-y art thing on Facebook that fell flat but you can’t be brilliant every day is what I always say.  Most days, but not all.  Even Hemingway, I’m sure, bored the crowds once or twice. 

I can’t stay long.  I’m off to the treadmill and then a tiny bit of work, and then L.’s. 

Colleen was coming today, I vaguely remember.  It’s today or two days ago, so I’ve either missed her or am in danger of it.  The house is something to scoff at, Colleen, you’ll have to be coming for nothing more than charm.  I promise to summon it. 

It’s Friday, so you’re all invited to Happy Hour.  I haven’t picked yet, which one … which hour, that is.  M. and D., let’s meet at The Bowery if you want.  Everyone else, let’s just meet here.  I have an appointment at 6, but after it will crave entertainment.  If you can juggle or do card tricks, apply here.  I’ll feed you crackers.

It takes a helicopter 17 minutes to get from my house into Portland.  More or less.  (I personally prefer less, at least in this case.) 

Enjoy the birds.

I missed the chance, in New York, to go to Brad Gooch’s book party and thank him for writing about O’Connor.  It’s a horrid excuse, too:  I was doing my hair.  Well, I wasn’t doing it, Jen was, while a man rubbed my hands — there are worse ways to miss a party.  

We thought we’d timed it okay, C. and I, but we hadn’t, and so for fabulous hair, I missed Gooch.  And while my slight was surely a difficult pill to crush up into his orange juice, I’m sure he’s found consolation in acclaim.  The NYT Book Review, you might remember, put him smack dab on their front page, and Joyce Carol Oates wrote about his book here. 

Cheers, B.G.  You ought to pat yourself somewhere, the back perhaps or wherever they’re patting these days. 

The thing with O’Connor that I admire — stop me if you catch me saying “Flannery,” Joan Acocella just chewed a reviewer out, rightfully, for doing that same thing — wait, not admire but envy, is that besides her work and the chickens, there was little noise.  Well, her health, I suppose.  So okay, work / chickens / health, my point is she gave herself space to focus.  I’ve no space to focus.  There’s noise and no end of it — sonic booms and chronic little squeaks both — and it’s been this way for years.  It’s why I want chickens.  There are no dramatic goings-on, for one, at the schools the chickens attend. 

I’m listening to Maria Callas sing Fidelio, and wishing dearly to have lunch with M.  Not that Callas reminds me of M. … well maybe subconsciously she does, who’s to say.  New York, though, where M. is, would be a lovely place to work in the day but I’d like to return here at night and sometimes on weekends.  Could that be arranged?  It’s 2010 almost, for pete’s sake, why the hell can’t it?

I’ve never listened to Fidelio, it’s a beautiful opera, Beethoven’s only one.  Beethoven was, it was said, unkind to singers.  The vocal pieces he wrote, Fidelio included, were tricky to pull off.  So they say.  I’m no Alex Ross.  I do know, though, that Callas singing the difficult opera is lovely to listen to at 9 in the morning here on the West Coast.

Like you, now I have work to do.