shivering pair with gold red fingers bare willow branches our merry boys and girls frozen rivulets Adam and Eve spoke Dutch
Who’s minding the store?
After the German philosopher Eric Gutkind sent Albert Einstein a copy of his tome Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt on salvation, Einstein offered some comments in German that he mailed off to the author. (The cost of mailing a letter was 3¢.) Both Einstein and Gutkind had German-Jewish origins, had the good fortune(…)
Runner beans rubbing shoulders (from P.Lively)
Falseness of a former life (from L.Tolstoy)
all aglow kindliness and weariness he meditated on the use he should devote to that power of youth which is granted to man only once Cossack children spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place climbing over fences to avoid going around the other side of the river was deserted as yet no mistakes(…)
No one can remember (from G.Greene)
far from Golgotha you too, God, you are ill with me I’ve wept your tears not a policeman for nothing it might have been the same bottle of gin stained with gin the image of George VI dinner with the Commissioner a house in Kent when she’s gone I’ll be alone forever imploring fingers in(…)
Too early (from Colette)
I’m ready, once again, too early music halls and theatre ‘Marie, there, just behind you.’ the Russian dancers trying to get warm 10:22: rifle shots, barking Finale of the dogs 10:47: Russian dancers 11:10: I !!! I !!! made up in red and mauve smoked to the bitter end this hideous December night Sunday again(…)
October ferry (from M.Lowry)
The branches of the trees brushed beginning: beginning again: beginning yet again: here we go, into the blue morning in this country I started at $8 a month one winter afternoon of thunder and snow he felt as if he had swallowed a bolt of lightening and now you saw the tempestuous sky brighten as(…)
St. Francis and the wolf (from M.Szabo)
if the lock failed to turn the all-seeing dead I didn’t know then with uncovered head politically frozen boiling bedlam in a cauldron over a naked flame if someone could vouch for us rugs soaking in the tub she always wore black, an apron changed daily kept her cat inside and never let him out(…)
Face at the window (from C.Toibin)
January 1895 a new generation a lifeline an evening in his own apartments, it was indeed gruesomely intimate the husband knew not to speak ‘when we are all dead and forgotten, only you would be remembered’ the only child among them neither puzzled nor hurt in his own armchair an American writing about English life(…)
Curfew (from P.Modiano)
four hours to wait for the Paris train a brunette in a yellow taxi stifling in the footsteps born in Vienna a sleepless night in that semi-somnombulist state occasionally interrupted by a shaft of sunlight under someone’s protection two men and three women tempted to say yes elected to the explorers club detached from everything(…)
