In a meeting online with disabled friends, one of them autistic. He eats several pieces of paper during our session and I envy him. I really do. Just as I envy the crow who walks straight across the top of my fence, perfect, a hieroglyph in motion. There’s so much to desire.
Yes. There’s so much and so much. I love Whitman because he doesn’t covet things.
It’s not easy eating a sheet of paper.
**
I’m going to make a mistake old dog
Winter in your dreams
And god damned winter in mine
Hello dear birch
Here is the unambiguous sun
I insist today is eternal
**
I love Verdi more than any other…More than eating. I love the master’s quick hinges—three notes and you’re in another galaxy. No one does it so well. No one thinks faster than Joe Green.
**
Verdi’s childhood piano, now under glass at La Scala. You can see penciled letters on the keys where his father drew the notes. My wife described it to me, as I’m blind. And so there was the artifact with its original tenderness, and then my wife’s description, and I knew it was the same tenderness.
**
The dog who loves you turns up in your dreams. Last night she was a woman on a train who said her name was “Evensong” (I kid you not) and she was old and dignified.
**
It is almost certain the first makers of papyrus chewed the reeds and sometimes swallowed a mouthful in the process.
Planet of the Blind 