Fall Semester.

After a syrupy, off-kilter summer of too many illnesses and the my house redolent of heat (it soaks through the bricks and the single-pane windows), autumn is finally coming.

I get to— I remind myself of this, the sheer enormity and pleasure of this— focus this year on the literature I'm reading— I'm starting off chronologically on my history list, making my way through Ovid, to Shakespeare and Cervantes. So far reading has been a joyous and strangely private experience: my brother caught me talking to my battered, much-flagged copy of Pamela. (Sometimes you and Samuel Richardson just have to throw down across several centuries).

Mostly I read from my loveseat with the pale knitted throw across the back: I listen to the sweep and the yawning pitch of the cars on the street below. My sky is broken by decade-old trees (huge and feathery) and telephone wires.