Peaches

No, not the singer. I'm talking about the dozens and dozens of peaches on the tree in my yard. They're almost ready. Just now I took a few bites of one. They're so small, but actually not half bad. I think in five or six days they'll be ready. I doubt they'll ever get very big.

Maybe next week there will be warm peach cobbler on my kitchen table.

I slept so well, so deeply last night. I've been up working for a couple hours, but all I want to do is get under the covers and go back to sleep. Still tired, still drained. I've had a hard summer. Harder than I could have imagined.

I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. last night reading Patricia Highsmith's PLOTTING AND WRITING SUSPENSE FICTION. I'm conflicted because she was such an amazing writer, but I know all this hateful stuff about her personal life. There's a photo of her on the cover, looking like a mean Linda Hunt. I try not to look at it, if at all possible. Still, she says so many insightful things about the writing process, and writers in general.

Here's her typewriter. It's housed somewhere--Switzerland, maybe?--with her papers. It's more soothing to look at than she is.



The next book on my reading list is Jean Genet's novel QUERELLE. I haven't read Genet in years. I have a beat-up copy of OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, which I've never read, but QUERELLE is at the top of my list. I vaguely remember doing something in college with a one-act play he wrote that's set in a jail cell--just three guys in a jail cell. Did I stage it? Did I only write about it? Did I just think about doing something with it? I can't remember. Genet, by the way, is my favorite playwright. Read THE BLACKS: A CLOWN SHOW or THE MAIDS or THE BALCONY. You'll see what I mean.

I've decided, as Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night, that I truly want to start over with so many things in my life. Clear the slate. Start fresh.

Here's to an amazing autumn. For everyone.