April Morning, Paris

I haven’t written anything here in a while, partly because if life seems to repeat itself perhaps blogs shouldn’t. But I’ve gone back to reading a few pages from Virginia Woolf’s Diary each night before I turn off the light, and she is infinitely inspiring and witty and wise and something she said in the part I was reading last night (1922) about reviewing and her editor’s nit-picking caused me to get out my pencil and put some lines in the margin.

Ultimately, what it led me to was a phone call I had with one of my literary (acquaintances, friends?) three days ago. We’d made an appointment to talk on the phone on Wednesday at 5 pm after I returned from London (Tuesday evening) where I spent four days. When I called she reprimanded me for not calling Tuesday, as we’d decided—no, no, I said, I couldn’t I was on the Eurostar on Tuesday afternoon, coming back. To make a long story short, she then told me I must have got mixed up and—irritated—I said maybe she’d got mixed up.

End of conversation, but it still rankles a little so I put it here, hoping to un-rankle it.

I’ve been off to readings—Oxford, at Blackwells, two in Paris, one at Phyllis Cohen’s lovely Berkeley Books in the 6th, the second a few days ago at Reid Hall, also in the 6th, also wonderful, because there were lots of old and new friends, and friends of the other two readers (Nina Bogin, Marilyn Hacker) and it was a beautiful reading so we sat outside in Reid Hall’s courtyard until the reading began. Then I went to London, to see my daughter and the Bonnard Show at the Tate Modern, and London seemed green and carpeted in spring flowers and full of bird song (in Hackney).