I see that it has once again been five days since I posted here, and I wonder to myself if in some way I have disappeared in the meantime, melted into the ether. I wonder what happens to the image of me you hold in your mind when I do not write about myself: does it hold very still, like something frozen? Does it lose all its color and fade away, like photographs of a person who has gone back into the past and erased her grandparents’ meeting in a time-travel movie? Do you imagine that my days away from my blog are neat blank voids, clean as a crossword puzzle before you unfold the morning paper? Or do you invent for me amusing pastimes based on the personality you imagine me to have—do I go square dancing? Do I write letters? Do I play hopscotch and drink peppermint schnapps?

Here is one thing: I listened to someone read 126 words from page 57 of Lolita. Felt the pleasurable warmth of recognition. Called out, loudly but not loudly enough, “Lolita!” Failed to win a drink. Felt happy anyway.

Three formations of yawping geese flew back north over my head in the deepening sky. I guess they believe winter’s over.

Three stars, rare as diamonds, were there to be seen, two bright and one shy.

I have a medicated face wash in my shower that is sitting upside down at the moment because it’s almost empty; every single time I look at it I think what it says on its label is “For Tropical Use.” I imagine taking a plane to Tahiti, lying on a hammock in the sun, and after a while getting up to wash my face in the South Pacific.

My sister sent us some photographs that she took with her camera while we were visiting Singapore, and while they are all wonderful this one is my favorite, mostly because it makes me look like some kind of off-duty circus acrobat with freakishly long arms. Also, it captures me doing one of the things I love best in the whole wide world:

Wearing my Keens. Man, I love those things. When I’ve got them on I feel like I can go anywhere! Do anything! Squish into as much mud and iguana poop as necessary in order to retrieve bamboo! Yeah.

Upon attending my second Kafka class it became apparent that my teacher is not only terrifically smart and an excellent lecturer, she’s also incredibly dictatorial and a little bit more fond of the sound of her own voice than everyone else’s. Just a little. So far I don’t mind much, since what she has to say is more interesting than what anyone else has to say, and also I know better than to do anything that would invite her wrath (she has scolded people for whispering and cut them off sharply and imperiously for disagreeing with her on points of fact). Also, it is tremendously funny to watch a classroom full of adults shift in their seats and look down at their feet like chastised kindergarteners.

Even if I had been annoyed with her all would have been forgiven the moment we read this piece, close to the end of class this Wednesday, and she interrupted our bemused ponderings by producing a luminous reading of it (not hers, but “the one that comes closest to my own interpretation”) that transformed the character of the words so beautifully and appropriately, for me, anyway (I don’t know about you and everybody else), that I almost laughed out loud with sheer joy. Here is the piece:

The Trees

For we are like the trunks of trees in the snow. Apparently they rest smoothly on the surface and with a gentle push we should be able to shift them. No, that one cannot, for they are firmly attached to the ground. But see, that too is only apparent.

We had been talking about Kafka’s sense of what it is to be human, his somewhat dysfunctional personality, his desire to be in physical contact with other people and yet what seemed like his inability to make deep and intimate connections with them. We all stared at the words on the page, mulling over what it could possibly mean for people to be like the trunks of trees, seemingly movable, then seemingly immovable, then—perhaps—movable again.

And then, lightly, cheerfully, there came this comment from the head of the table:

“Many readers have argued that the we in the first sentence is not a human we, but a we that refers to the letters themselves; sharp, black, angular letters against snow white paper, straight and firm as trees.”

And as soon as she said the word letters I could feel my heart expand and my lips move into a smile and my mind fly, not because the image of tree trunks in the snow is the perfect way to talk about language, but because how many times have I myself had that odd experience of having my relationship to a piece of literature changed once, twice, three times: coming upon a set of words fresh as a flower and feeling sure I know exactly how to read them, what meaning they hold, how they will unfold for me so willingly and perfectly; then becoming frustrated, finding the words stubborn and unyielding, as if their meaning is buried deep beneath and will not be budged; then, knowing that not to be true, trying again to shift them so that they glide for me, spill their secrets, dance across the page into the sense I know they were destined to make? Why, it was happening now! It was happening right at that moment, and so smoothly and unexpectedly it was as if I myself had roots that were shifting so that I could smoothly slide across the snow.

What I love about Kafka is not that he creates images that seem so familiar and right to me that they might be elemental. I love other people for that: Bukowski and Carver and Amichai, and others. What I love about Kafka is how he creates images that tug at me in a baffling way until I realize (if I am lucky, anyway) that they describe a sideways, off-kilter experience I have had many times, but would never have even known how to think about if I hadn’t first come across that utterly bizarre, baffling image. He turns everything inside out and I have to turn it back again, but it’s like wrestling with a dream, slippery and there is always the threat of waking.

I’m holding things inside me now, again, secrets, like seeds. It feels good, like I am dirt and can grow what I swallow.

Our upstairs neighbor has a record player that she keeps on the floor of her apartment and uses to play extremely loud music that shakes the ceiling of our apartment and is centered exactly above our dining table. At the moment, she appears to be listening to a frenetic and rather shouty polka tune, to which she is dancing in clogs. This is besides the extremely loud sex she has whenever her boyfriend comes over, and the mysterious, intermittent rumbling noises that emanate from up there every few evenings or so (we think maybe her hedgehog has a wheel that it likes to run on at night? It is very hard to know).

Ah, city living.

Dinner with Hal last night was late, but wonderful; we ate at a little Mexican place we’ve been meaning to try for ages and I consumed a gigantic carne asada burrito that must have been about twice the size of my stomach (amazing how the human body can adapt to that kind of thing, isn’t it?). We enjoyed a delightful conversation with him and his design colleague Walter, who calls himself a “ponderer.” Walter somehow manages to be a successful artist in the spare time he carves out from work, and this made us all, I think, feel rather lazy and inspired. It was a good feeling; good for me, anyway.

My Kafka class met for the first time on Wednesday and we have a wonderful Czech teacher with a sharp dry wit who is a translator (I believe she speaks Hebrew as well as everything else) and used to work for a children’s publishing company—good portents all! Also, four students who had taken previous classes with her returned for this one, obviously a terrific sign. One of them said, rather prettily, “You could be teaching a class about Elvis Presley and I would still be here.” I was the youngest person in the room by at least fifteen years—we shall see how and if that turns out to matter!

The music has stopped now, and has been replaced by a laughing chat on the phone. Perhaps peace will follow. If it does not, that is all right too. Life is rich. It need not be quiet.

Eric G. Wilson is a man after my own heart. Or at least, my heart as it is at its heart, underneath all the detritus of joyfulness it has managed to accumulate over the years. Happiness is hard to scrape off, though.

Like barnacles.