Paris, 29 January 2023

It’s Sunday, 11 am, the sun is shining, temperature around freezing. Across the street, church bells are ringing, I suppose a service is about to start. I like the bells—who could not like bells? You really don’t need a watch here, there are always bells, sacred and secular, to tell you what time it is: time to get up, time to start work, time to meet a friend for a drink…

I’ve been listening to poets reading online, prompted by a comment I read about Plath’s gorgeous throaty voice. I’ve never heard Plath reading her poems, I thought, and of course, there are recordings online, and yes, she is a very good reader. This led me to Lowell, then Wilbur - a rabbit hole of poets-before-the-internet. I’ve also been listening to audiobooks: Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, really wonderfully read, now Ishiguro, also excellent, Joyce read by someone with an Irish accent, Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The problem, if it is a problem, is that listening makes me fall asleep and miss half the story so I have to rewind and fall asleep in different places the next night.