After a time he began to wander about, going lippity-lippity, and not very fast.

i spent a very pleasant monday morning in the children's book section of shakespeare and company...the windows were all open and i sat on a tiny chair and read. the world melted away as i remembered countless hours on countless armchairs and couches and beds listenting to my mother and grandmother read to me, and later reading to them, and even later reading to myself in the hollow of my favorite tree or in the green room at the theatre or at my father's dining room table.

below is a list of some of my favorite books. it's so funny how instrumental they have been in the life i have created for myself...from madeline in the streets of paris to the bowls of blueberries and milk in the boxcar children to harriet-the-spy-like the careful observation of people i see on streets and in trains...images from all of these stories creep into my life constantly. i feel so blessed to have spent a childhood in the company of these wonderful characters and to notice when parts of them seep into my adult life.

The Day Jimmy's Boa ate the wash
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Tuck Everlasting
Madeline's Rescue
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
A Porcupine Named Fluffy
The Boxcar Children
Caddie Woodlawn
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Ghost Cat
Harriet the Spy
Matilda
more to come...

the way i walked

away from his crooked floors and tall windows and curling plants and...
down that tiny street, at the end of which lay the seine...
down the quai and past the boats where i imagine the ghosts of pirates still live...
across a bridge that knows only feet, where a man in black sat playing the clarinet, which matched the sky and my insides...
and then my heel got stuck between wooden slats, and i had to look down, and then...because i was standing there, still, already, i looked up...
and there was an archway and the entrance to what was once a palace
crossed a busy street and joni started singing about a baby, born with the moon in cancer
and i stepped on each cobblestone, one at a time while she sang about crocuses and california...
another arch and the gardens with fountains where someone i loved once told me to rent a tiny sailboat...and i imagined his peter pan ghost there in black and white.
and the narrow path with trees curving up and over the length of green fence
and old men with small dogs and jogging firemen and women scowling and smoking
and in a hurry
and the grate over the bookstore windows is still down and the books stare out like little paper prisoners
maybe monday i will walk this way again.