One day a few months ago, I stepped outside, and, to my left, a sudden blur flew off into the trees facing our porch. It was a Carolina Wren, perched on a low branch. It has an unmistakable contour—a little bird with, most obviously, a cocked tail.

I looked at our potted plant, set on a small iron table near the door, from which the Carolina Wren left and saw, within some Spanish moss, the clear beginnings of a nest.

Right next do our highly-trafficked front door? The same door we let our dog and cat out, and in, many times a day? Dear Carolina Wren, is this the best house-constructing decision you could make?

My wife, Gaywynn, and I started adjusting our entrance and exit behavior. We opened the front door cautiously, did not peer into the potted plant, hoping to disturb this process as little as possible. Behind a window, we watched the birds fly to our plant with bits of straw, sticks and leaves in their beaks. “Their,” because it was two doing the job, male and female.

What we saw in this nest-building over the next week or so was skill, hard work and persistence.

Which leads me to the question: how do the birds know when they have to begin building a nest? How does the female know it’s pregnant? Is there some way the female informs the male that she’s expecting? Is there some form of communication that says: we need to build a home for our arriving babies—now? Something must go on in, and between, them.

To further confuse things, research tells me that birds build their nest before they mate. Yet another magnificent mystery of the natural world.

When I watched the birds working so diligently and purposefully together, I thought of my own mother and father and the home they built for me and my siblings. I thought of myself and the home my first wife and I built for our daughter. Did we provide safety, nourishment and comfort for our child? Were we good nest-builders? There is a French word I’ve always wished we had an equivalent of, dénicher, which means “to take a bird from its nest.” (Niche, means “nest” in French.) When my parents divorced, my siblings and I were de-nested. When my first wife and I divorced, our young daughter was de-nested. Yanked from her nest.

To watch these birds build their nest is to feel a sense of protection against the world. We don’t call it a nest, we call it a home, and we all need one.

One day, it appeared that the two birds were done.

A week or so later, we peeked inside the pot and saw five small white speckled eggs nestled together. Such a sweet sight!

Then the female—because, I found out, it’s only the female who sits on the eggs—did what she does. Sometimes, when we opened the door a bit too abruptly, she would fly away. We would say, “Sorry, Mom!”

About two weeks later, we peeked and—two tiny hairy heads! It felt like we were godparents. Another lovely sight!

Our vigil then took the form of watching the parents bring food to the two nestlings. They brought insects of all sorts—worms, bugs of all kinds, some I could identify, some not—on a steady basis. First, one bird, then the other, working in tandem.

Baby birds, as we know, are insatiably hungry. Their parents kept coming with the goods, all day, without fail. This instinct, developed over millions of years to insure the future of the species, is something to behold. Watching the wisdom and power of nature unfold, the urge to continue, on our porch was humbling.

The feeding continued. The nestlings grew. Then they seemed ready to fledge. They adult Wrens had done their job.

One night, a few days later, we were in our living room talking, when we heard a loud screech, a noise, very close by. It seemed to come from some sort of animal. But what animal? Neither of us recognized it. We didn’t hear it again.

The next day we went outside and took a look into the nest.

We had hoped we would see these two little birds fledge. A year ago, a pair of Carolina Wrens built a nest in my wife’s bicycle basket, which is stationed, always unused, on our back porch. We watched the two little birds grow, fledge, and then, one morning, fly away. That moment of first flight was thrilling. All that work and care—fulfilled. We knew too well we were charmed to have witnessed that.

The nest was empty. We did not see the birds fledge. The truth is, in nature, once in a lifetime is often all you get. If you are able to see two birds fledge and fly away one time, that moment can last a lifetime.

Life in the wild continues. However nature decrees it to. Carolina Wrens are still here, singing their third-balcony-strong arias at dawn, reminding me how privileged I am, even earth-bound, to be part of their world.

I ordered her inside. She came in, with one look backward. That did nothing to assuage. She begged to go out again. Restless, didn’t stop moving. Her instinct telling her something she must do. I let her out, again. Same scene. She, wandering a bit, looking at me like, “La de dah, I’m not going to eat grass, not me! Just checking things out here, Rich. Hey! Look at that, over there!” Then, diving in again, grass maniac.

I commanded her back inside again.

This went on, and on. Didn’t stop. In, out. In, out. Obsessive! What’s gotten into her?

Trying to contend with this must-do behavior, no solution in sight. What to do? I call the vet. Soonest appointment, two hours away. Ok, ok, I’ll take it.

Then, discover she’s barfed. On her bed. I see remnants of grass, chow, slime. I have some relief. Still, she wants out. Still, she wants grass. Insatiable.

These fears of mine are reminiscent of what I experienced with my daughter when she was a little girl. My alarm today is like the alarm I felt when my girl got sick. Worry and helplessness are the two tonics parents must drink from time to time when their child is ill. It’s especially bitter when your child can’t talk yet, can’t tell you what hurts or where.

To the vet, at last. Manon’s not happy there, never is. Vet says: she probably ate grass to throw up. (The Internet had said the opposite! F the Internet.) Or! She might have swallowed something—part of a toy, for example. Or gobbled up something foul—cat scat or some part of a dead animal.

Did we feed her something spoiled, inadvertently? Was it us?? Are we guilty?!

He took an X-ray. Showed me the result. Pointing at the ghostly body, he couldn’t see anything obvious, except a small sliver of something. Not large enough to worry. He gave her a shot to calm her down and relieve her of her nausea.

“If she throws up in the next 24 hours,” he said, “bring her back in, and we’ll do a series of more detailed tests.” If, the vet said, she had swallowed something substantial, he would have to operate.

He gave me some special dog food that was good for calming her restless stomach. Total cost: $200.

Back home. My wife returns from work. We watch our baby carefully. Alert to notice any upset. She eats the special dog food! Doesn’t have an unstoppable desire to devour grass! Seems better!

So attached to this animal, we are. To this creature. To this blessed dog. Would go batshit crazy if she…can’t even say it!

She sleeps all right that night.

Next morning. Baby, baby, baby. How are you today? Feeling better? Feeling ok? How’s the tummy?

You scared me to death. Whew.

I was a thirty-five year-old copywriter hired by the Ally & Gargano advertising agency in 1980. This was a storied place, responsible for some of the wittiest, most memorable advertising of its era, or any. I felt lucky to be part of it. Their office was on Third Avenue between 49th Street and 50th Street in New York City.

The first day I got there I was told to go see Jerilyn Caesar.

She was the office manager. That simple designation only begins to define her role at the agency. They didn’t have an HR department back then, so Jerilyn was it. When I went into her office, she gave me, in her inimitable way — “You gotta sign this shit” — the paperwork I had to sign, all the details about vacation days, sick days, holidays, benefits, medical, etc. Not to mention where my office would be, what furniture I might choose from, etc. All of this she did in an off-handed way. She was a bit like a gunslinger. If gunslingers came from Queens.

She used “Yeah” frequently. She wouldn’t have been out of place on a construction crew. She would have been the foreman. She had black silky hair, fair skin, and lovely eyes. And, later, when I got to know her, a radiant, open smile. I was instantly attracted to her, but she did not give off any vibe that I could sense to indicate she might have a similar reaction. She was all business. At one point, she dropped her pen. She bent over to pick it up, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She never did, as I learned. I don’t think she even owned one. This startled me and excited me. It was a gift. What a great ad agency!

I would see Jerilyn in the office every day, but just in passing. Either walking down the hall or sitting at her desk. I noticed her. She didn’t treat me any differently than she did anyone else. She was gruff, efficient, no-nonsense. Jerilyn would walk down the hall as if she owned the place. In a way, she did. She wasn’t afraid or intimidated by anyone. Not Amil Gargano, the creative director. Not Carl Ally, the crude, loud, disheveled founder who every once in a while would walk into her office and ask her to sleep with him. Though he expressed it more directly. “Get the fuck out of here,” Jerilyn would reply, barely raising her eyes. I know, because she told me the story.

But I had my eye on her. I didn’t act, because it was not wise to go out with someone you worked with. And because she intimidated me. She didn’t socialize with the copywriters or the art directors. If someone in management wanted something, they came to her or summoned her, and she dealt with it. She didn’t wander into someone’s office to chat, though, unless it was one of the people she knew. But I must have asked her out, because we ended up going out and dating. I wish I could remember her reaction when I asked her on a date. I’m sure I was awkward. I’m sure, knowing her so well now, she probably looked up from her desk and said something like, “Are you kidding?”

But go out we did. So, she must have said yes. Where did we go on our first date? I don’t remember. What I do remember about the beginning of it all was being in her apartment at 20 Park Avenue. The building was between 35th Street and 36th Street. Park Avenue has a reputation for glamor and money, so I wondered how she could afford to live there. This is the Park Avenue south of Grand Central Station, though. For those of you who don’t know New York, there is a part of Park Avenue that stretches about ten blocks until, at 32nd Street, it becomes Park Avenue South. This is not the Park Avenue you would normally think of — the Park Avenue of, say, The Waldorf Astoria Hotel. It is sort of a Park Avenue annex. Just east of it is Murray Hill, another enclave, with pretty brownstones.

Her building had a doorman, and she liked living there because she felt safe, and this was New York, and she was a female living alone. When did I first go there? After how many dates? Speak, memory!

I do know that on one of our first dates, we went roller skating. Not outside in Central Park on a weekend. No, at night, on a weekday. Late. I’d never heard of roller skating at night. But this was a thing. People went late at night and they roller skated to music. Hip music. Music I didn’t know. (The song I remember hearing over and over was “The Tide Is High” by Blondie.) They dressed in kinds of costumes. They took drugs. Jerilyn told me that. It was a scene. I didn’t know what a scene was. I was usually in bed at the time she went out to skate.

I think the place was downtown on the far west side. I didn’t roller skate that well, and that, along with my decidedly un-hip outfit, made me look like I entered a side door by mistake. Jerilyn skated well and glided around the rink coolly, never smiling, always in control. I desperately tried to keep up. You’ve seen awkward roller skaters. Picture that. Jerilyn would nod hello to various characters we’d pass. Maybe exchange a word or two. Nothing gregarious. Nothing bursting with affection. Cool, as I said.

I was in a different world, as if I was in an actual foreign country where I didn’t speak the language. I felt awkward. But feeling awkward wasn’t that bad. I just didn’t feel like I belonged. In the end, I didn’t enjoy myself very much. But here’s the thing: I wanted to be with Jerilyn, and this is what she liked to do, and so I did it.

And so it was that I entered the demi-world, a place I was completely unfamiliar with. It was inhabited by lost souls, eccentrics, transvestites, gays, people who led one kind of life during the day and another completely different life at night. Night! That was Jerilyn’s time. That was her domain. Not mine! I was a morning person, up early and trying to write before work. Jerilyn was an owl, a creature of midnight who loved to adorn herself in exotic clothing, in costumes and makeup, and venture forth only to fly back home at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning. She had a slew of friends and acquaintances she gathered around her or encountered in her nocturnal life, some of whose names she knew, others, no.

Some of these people were in the office, lying dormant during the day, in deep cover, working in the mailroom or at one of the bureaucratic tasks that kept the gears moving in the agency. I never knew who they were until we’d meet them at a club or disco, skating rink or bar. It surprised me. You? I would think? You, from the mailroom, you are this wild person?

The fact is that when I say wild person, I’m only comparing them to me, the most domesticated, plain-vanilla guy you could imagine. I entered her world like Walter Mitty, timid and awkward. The only way I got into that scene was, essentially, Jerilyn saying, “He’s with me.” I would nod smiling in my Brooks Brothers outfit as I’m certain they were thinking, “Really?”

Jerilyn, I found, was a kind of mentor, mother hen, therapist, advisor and savior to many of these people. They came to her with their problems, their love stories, their disappointments and struggles, and she always had something to tell them that they needed to hear. A lot of times it was simply, “To hell with them.” Or the equivalent. They trusted her. She never judged who they were. She never blinked an eye at their differences or their way of life. Not blinking an eye may be the best way to describe her. She was fearless. She didn’t care who she was up against. If they did something she didn’t like or thought was wrong, she said so. In very plain English.

I was enthralled with her. She was a badass and she was gorgeous and sexual and exciting. She also told the truth and had a big heart and had a tenderness she didn’t show everyone. Or maybe anyone. But I saw it. I came to know it. It was lovely.

She’d been married. And divorced. I remember her telling me once that she had been very unhappy when she was married.

“I used to sit on my roof by myself and dream that Superman would come and rescue me.”

She hardly ever revealed personal unhappiness, and so I was moved by this.

What is hard about writing about her is that she might have appeared tough, a badass, and she genuinely was, but she was also tender and sweet and giving and open. Not at first with me. But later, yes. Look at her face in the photographs. You can see.

We took a share on Fire Island the summer of 1981, on Atlantique, a small, isolated community near Fair Harbor. It was a trudge to get there, because at one point the boardwalk for Fair Harbor stopped, and then there was nothing but sand. It was a big house with some people we didn’t know, and a few of them were somewhat odd. But we were happy there. She loved the beach, loved the sun, was always drawn to it.

In New York, we would go to the Mudd Club to dance. It was a small dark place on White Street in lower Manhattan. We would dance and dance, loving every minute. We saw Buddy Guy there once, and he got off the stage with his guitar and walked into the bathroom where we followed him and where he continued to play. I loved dancing with Jerilyn. I loved holding her. She was in her element, night.

She loved orchids, and always had two or three growing in her apartment. If you knew her, it made sense.

If she didn’t like something or someone, she told you. Out loud. Her reasons were often ethical, and by that I got to know her. She didn’t like deceit, hypocrisy, betrayal, and misuse of power. If she didn’t like someone, it showed on her face, in her body language. It didn’t matter who it was, male or female, rich or poor, old or young.

We took a wonderful trip to St. Maarten in the Caribbean together. It was glorious! We went in the winter, just at the time when New York City’s winter begins to bog you down and almost defeats you. And then, there we were, on this lovely island, together, in love.

We kept our love affair secret. The night that we announced our affair was at my apartment at 302 West 12th Street in the Greenwich Village. I had invited Dennis D’Amico and his girlfriend, Ann, for dinner. Dennis and I were co-workers and friends, and I told him that I was having a romance with someone in the office, and, for the life of him, he couldn’t guess who. So, I said, you and Ann come over for dinner Saturday, and there will be a big reveal. Jerilyn and I prepared dinner, and when Dennis and Ann arrived, she went into the bedroom and closed the door. They came in, I gave them drinks, and, at a certain point, I made some sort of dramatic announcement,

“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…”

I knocked on the door. It opened, and out came Jerilyn.

“Ta-da,” she said, spreading her arms.

Dennis and Ann, mouths hanging open. Never in their wildest conjectures did they think it might be Jerilyn. It was just so unlikely. And it was.

We discussed marriage. I wanted children. She did not. She had no desire to be a mother. She had some physical problems as well, the nature of which I don’t exactly remember. She said she might be willing to change her mind, but it’s not fair to ask someone to do something like that, to be a mother, when she has told you she doesn’t want that at all. So I backed off but not before there was some tension between us about it. Instead, she had a niece and a nephew she was good to and for whom she could be the outrageous aunt, the cool aunt.

We didn’t last.

We did keep in touch, though, and many years later I visited her in Florida where she’d moved. She wanted to be close to the beach. Then we talked on the phone, and we exchanged e-mails frequently. It was all lovely. I was happy that we stayed in each other’s lives.

She did not take the best care of herself. She loved two things that did her harm—the sun and smoking. They took their toll. There were other problems. Her health declined. Then, badly.

Let me think about her when she was young, and I was young. Let me think about the woman who I found so alluring and attractive, so irresistible. The dark-haired Italian-American woman with the radiant smile and the large heart who often hid that heart behind a street toughness that could make her fearful indeed. The woman I loved. Who I learned so much from and who I will miss until the day I die.

Living where I do, in New York City, near Columbia University, where there is a constant ebb and flow of youth, makes me think dark thoughts indeed. I start to have covetous rants in my mind, the kind you hear old men make to themselves under their breath in scary movies. Why should they be young, I think, and I be growing old? Why should they have their life ahead of them, and I have mine mostly behind me? I—I who would know how to use their youth to its fullest degree—I should have their youth!

I want your youth, you there, bright savage boy, with your studied insouciance, flip-flops, tousled hair, tattoo, and torn T-shirt. I covet what you have, and I’m going to have it. In the dark of the night I’ll come to your dorm room and threading my way among beer cans, baseball glove, lacrosse stick, assorted balls, X-box, bong, condoms, bottles of booze, female clothing left behind and unopened textbooks, I’ll come to you while you’re sleeping. Then I’ll sink my teeth into your neck, and I’ll suck your blood. I’ll imbibe your youth, drain it from your body. I’ll feel its strength shoot through my own veins, replenishing me.

Then I’ll leave you there, sleeping, with two denture marks on your neck.

I knew her because I teach creative writing at the Affiliated Blind here in Lafayette, Louisiana where I live and have for the last three years. Yvette, who was blind herself, taught braille at Affiliated. She came to the writing class frequently, though less so in the last months. I’m always reluctant to ask about the participants’ personal lives, but when I said I hoped Yvette would return to the class soon after her absence, someone told me she was being treated for cancer. My heart sank. I was so fond of her.

She was the only person in the class who had a seeing-eye dog, a sweet-tempered lab who sat quietly and patiently at her feet during class. Yvette was completely blind. Darkness was her world. I don’t know if she was blind at birth. Every person who comes to the class has a unique history of their vision or lack of it. Some are blind at birth. Some lose their sight gradually. Some lose their sight because of an illness or accident. Some never are completely blind but have vision that is highly compromised.

She was small, had an even-cadenced voice and a calm, peaceful disposition. She reminded me of the composure of some nuns I’ve seen in my life, somewhat withdrawn into themselves, placid, sure of their inner life, at peace.

She wrote a wonderfully entertaining long story about aliens who come to Earth on a quest to learn about our music. (Yes, there’s a reason.) The thing about Yvette’s writing is that it has—and that any successful fantasy writing needs to have—confidence. Yvette believed 100% in her story, in her characters, in their motivations, in how they behaved and in the galactic place where they lived. It doesn’t matter how far-fetched the story is, if the writer is writing from deep conviction that her people and places are real, the reader has a good mind to believe they are. I know I did. The class was rapt.

Yvette usually sat quietly at the big conference table in the room where the class met. I grew to rely on her contributions, on the pieces she submitted—she often sent me shorter pieces as well—because we didn’t always have enough pieces to fill the time. She was religious and sometimes wrote about her faith. Once, she imagined being at Jesus’ birth and wrote, “A Blind Person in Bethlehem.” Whatever you believe, you are moved reading it. That’s the thing about good writing, isn’t it?

This is from a piece she wrote and presented to the class called “Windows to the Soul.” I can only quote a few lines with a clean conscience, because I don’t have her permission to print the entire piece, and, obviously, I never will. Fair practice, it’s called in the arts:

“I heard somewhere that our eyes are the windows to our souls….I can not look out through my windows. Can others look in? Do they convey the messages I wish to send? Do they show my hopes and dreams? Do they reveal those things that I wish to keep secret? Who knows the answer?”

The street itself is made of bullion-shaped cobblestones. Despite their shiny solidness, they look vulnerable, because they were put there by hand, one by one, so many years ago. Many of the buildings you walk by have short iron loading docks and big doors and sooty windows. It is 1980.

Did you ever think that architecture would get into you this deeply, as deeply as painting and music? Now, you know you are inspired by these cast iron buildings as well as by the simple grace of brownstones, by the great Brooklyn Bridge, the longest poem in the world, and by the rust-colored 19^th century brick warehouses looming near the Hudson River.

You arrive at 55 Greene Street. You shout up to a window. The window opens, a head emerges, and a key is thrown down to you. You open a gate-wide door. You are a young writer here to meet other writers and to work with them. A door to the loft opens and you shyly—but not too shyly—enter. You climb wooden creaking stairs until you reach an opened door to a loft. You walk inside.

There they are.

There are four women and six men. One of the women is full of betrayal you will find, and heartless. She has lynx eyes that bore through you and Veronica Lake hair, one wing of which flows over one side of her face. She has a feral baritone and the fullest, softest lips you’ve ever seen and what a writer she is. You will fall so hard for her that she will repossess your soul, and you won’t mind, that’s how far you’ll be gone.

She’s from Texas. The second woman is from California, the third from Louisiana and the fourth from Chicago. Three of the men are from California, one is from Alabama and one is from here. And you.

The owner of the loft has an unfiltered cigarette in his mouth. The smoke dragon-streams from his nostrils. He has a small glass of whiskey at his side from which he sips from time to time.

Will you ever possibly be as suave a writer as he is? Should you take up smoking unfiltered cigarettes and drinking whiskey, both of which you can’t stand? His girlfriend is here, too, straight-backed, tall, with luxurious supple hair in a thick braid hanging behind her back and a sweetness that fills the room.

All of you are here trying hard to write and to be true to what it is you need to say, and for the next eight years these people will champion your efforts and you, theirs.

This is your writer’s group in Soho.

In the back, though, at a counter, behind slanting glass, are long rectangular stainless steel containers full of different kinds of food. My destination.

The Verti Marte! It inspires a kind of lyric rapture. I think about it and I feel like I’m Shelley. I want to write a poem, “Hail to thee, blithe Market!”

The food? Well, yes, very New Orleans. Meaning, “Weight watchers, abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But...so...good.

To wit: barbecued ribs. Blackened catfish. Crab cakes. Shrimp Creole. Stuffed pork chops. Turkey and dressing. Cajun red beans with smoked sausage. Meatballs. All delicious. (Paging Mr. Shelley for a more precise word than “delicious.”)

And: the best meat loaf (called “Grandma’s Boarding House Meatloaf”) I have ever had the privilege to introduce into my mouth. I can taste it now. I can see it now. I can smell it now. I am like a Great Dane drooling now, lakes of spittle coursing down my chin.

And you get two sides. Lima beans. Mashed potatoes. Dirty rice. Mac and cheese (outstanding). Broccoli and cheese. Many more.

Behind the counter, Ken and Rikki. They were welcoming, funny, attentive, inquisitive and helpful. Everyone should make themselves a stranger from time to time to understand, again, how powerful these gestures of recognition can be to the heart.

I’d order. Main dish (7 out of 10 times, meat loaf) with my two sides. They’d put it warm in a box container and hand it to me. It felt heavy as gold bullion. I’d buy a few beers.

I’d go back to 729 Ursulines, the box still warm in my hands, the gorgeous smell wafting out. I’d sit down, and, though eating alone, I was happy. Rocked in the sweet arms of Verti Marte.

It came to me hard in the early morning. I was in bed, about to get up. Like a flash of lightening, I saw that I am facing oblivion, of losing every single potential experience, of not existing, with painful clarity. It entered my bones and body and sent a cold chill through me.

Memento mori. The Romans said it. “Remember that you will die.”

Then I thought of the late British poet, Philip Larkin, and of his poem, “Aubade.”

Larkin looks at his death directly in the eye. He speaks the truth starkly and with searing clarity. The first time I read the poem, I trembled. I know I need and want someone to materialize my fear and anguish about death—to feel as I do. Someone who speaks the truth with unflinching specificity.

This is an excerpt from Larkin’s “Aubade”:

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Larkin exposes one of my greatest fears:

“The good not done, the love not given, time / Torn off unused.”

If death haunts you—it will, surely, at some moment—read the entire poem. Or read it just because it’s a great poem. I find solace in Larkin’s disdain of denial.

The poem’s title, “Aubade,” refers to dawn and, usually, in poetry, to a lover’s parting. But dawn is also the time when things are lake-clear, when you haven’t had a chance to put on your protective armor. Layers that deflect dark thoughts and inevitabilities. Dawn is the moment when nothing protects you. You see.

Some people have religion to console them, to give them the idea and the hope that, if they are good, eternal life awaits them after they die. (Or eternal suffering if they haven’t behaved well on this earth.) But no one, not a single person, can provide you with proof. The fact that cannot be denied is that death will come to us all. And that our time on this earth will come to a close. We can ignore this, we can pretend it’s not going to happen, and we can shelve it in a remote part of our mind, but it cannot be changed, it cannot be made to be untrue. “The mind blanks at the glare,” Larkin writes.

I walk around. I know that one day, I won’t. I won’t be here. No more seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching. It will all be gone. Gone. A simple stone-cold fact. Impossible to believe. I will die.

True.

I take a deep breath. My lungs fill with precious air. I hear the sounds of birds singing. I watch the new sun rise. I taste morning air. I touch the wood handle of my shovel. My wife tells me it will rain later today. I love its smell.

Alive.

Inevitability makes me live more fiercely.

Right now she’s working on a musical parody of The Matrix. She took a bit of it to the streets of London. I also saw her perform another part of it at a pub, The Betsy Trotwood. It was wild. And good!

I’m staying in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London. It’s in East London, not far from where Becky lives. The last time I was in London was 1972. I have little memory of that visit, or of London’s shape and scope. It was over fifty years ago. Essentially, I’m a stranger.

The weather had been cloudy and cool, with intermittent rain, not unexpected for London. The neighborhood my hotel is in is somewhat drab and uninspiring, but, again, I’m here to see my daughter, not to be wowed by architecture.

There were two big protest marches while I’ve been here, both on the same Saturday. One was a demonstration of the far right, a cause Americans are not unfamiliar with at this point. We did not attend, but coming out of the Trafalgar Theater after seeing the incredibly delicious play, Oh, Mary!, we caught the tail end of it. When you catch the tail end of anything, you encounter die-hards and, often in the case of parades and protests, people who have been drinking. We saw a few, most of whom had draped themselves in the Union Jack, and, to me at least, were not types I’d want to engage with.

Last night, Becky surprised me. She arranged for us to see a taping of the very popular British TV series, Taskmaster. It’s hard to fully explain this show, but my daughter adores it, and one of her close friends, the lovely comedian, Nina Conti, arranged for the passes. Taskmaster combines the best of dry, arch, somewhat insulting and slightly naughty British humor with pure silliness, and is beloved by the English. Five comedians vie to complete ridiculous tasks supplied by the creator of the show, Alex Horne. It’s been going strong for eleven years and is now in its 21st season. As I say, it’s beloved.

These tasks combine the awkwardness of smacking a piñata blindfolded with the most absurd scavenger hunt you can imagine. The tasks in no way educate you about anything. The weirder, and the more pointless, it seems, the better. These tasks are completed earlier, filmed, and shown to the audience—us—the night of the taping.

There is a host, in addition to Alex. His name is Greg Davies, a 6 ft. 8 in. gangling giant who resembles John Cleese both in height and acerbic humor. His questions and ripostes add buoyancy to the show and keep it on keel. If there is in fact a keel.

The set is simple and purposefully gaudy. Greg and Alex sit in patently fake gilded thrones and face the five participants who sit in simple red cushioned chairs. There is lots of repartee, and sometimes it’s funny and other times, well, not. But the show moves fast, and so there are very few pockets of dead air.

The comedians—some of whom, I should emphasize, are clearly chosen for their underdeveloped social skills—were funnier than others, but that would be the case, wouldn’t it? I often found myself laughing out loud.

The tasks are filmed in strangely unappealing locations—homes that you wouldn’t necessarily want to live in, back yards, caravans (mobile homes in British) and in basements. If you want to see a sample of this insanity, check out Taskmaster’s YouTube channel. It’s all there.

Becky was in heaven watching the show. She has the intense ardor of a maniacal British soccer fan. She was so excited seeing her heroes.

After the show, we went to the green room, a pass having been generously given to us by Becky’s friend, Nina. We met Alex Horne, the creator, who was absolutely delightful. He and Becky talked for quite a while. Towering Greg made a brief appearance. We also met the director of the show who has been its guide for all the shows 21 seasons. The show we saw taped will appear some six months from now.

Perhaps America’s best examples of silliness might be Sid Caesar’s Our Show of Shows, I Love Lucy or The Carol Burnett Show. But even those shows, good as they were, were never as pointless and as daringly ludicrous as Taskmaster.

What I can say without any hesitation is God bless silliness. I need it. I suspect we all need it. Just to bathe in a world of nonsense and meaninglessness was a balm, an escape, a joy, a relief. You have to become a child again to savor this show, this kind of comedy, and the lovely part is that it’s in us, somewhere, often put away in a locked closet so it won’t emerge in some stuffy “important” moment. Taskmaster opens that door.

The show made a go of it in America, but didn’t catch on. I don’t think we’re silly enough.

You are living in the East Village. It is 1985. The hot air sucks the breath out of you and hits you in the stomach. The heat is so fierce you have oasis shimmers in the back of your eyes, and you walk like a man with terminal heart disease. It is so hot, you have to be careful about touching street lamps.

In the evening, you sit on a stoop of a brownstone apartment next to people who live there. Some you know, some you don’t. Most cannot afford air conditioning, and so the heat has forced you all out on the street. You are living in Elmer Rice’s city and in Weegee’s city and in Henry Roth’s city, a world you love, of ordinary people from another era. There you all are, men and women, some younger, some older, all depleted from the heat, the women struggling against the despot of modesty, the men in armless T-shirts, or bare above the waist.

You see pretty women, normally vigilant about buttoned blouses and the high-water mark of skirts when they sit. They abandon all decorum. They have hair that sticks to sweaty necks, and the backs of the blouses are damp and flat against their backs and the high backs of their skirts are damp.

Here on this stoop in the heat you encounter the oral tradition of storytelling from these urban griots. In the sultry evening, you listen to the man who went to parties where Kerouac sat on a couch and Ginsberg was there as well as Corso. What did they say, you ask? What were they like? You listen to the aged black superintendent who proudly says he saw Joe Lewis knock out Max Schmeling. And you say, you mean you were there? And he says, yes I was.

And someone heard Emma Goldman speak once, in Union Square. You don’t know who Emma Goldman was yet, but you nod appreciatively. Here, everyone is a storyteller, and that’s what you want to be, too. You are part of this oral tradition now, and the storytellers have cans of Schaefer beer with panting dogs and cigarettes glowing in the late evening, and you could listen all night, all night long.

I never have, so here goes:

I stand for erasers.

I stand for my wife telling me I need a new project when I’m driving her and everyone else crazy.

I stand for getting a rejection with some meaningful comments.

I stand for a first cup of coffee in the morning that turns me into a human being.

I stand for a simple table and a simple chair.

I stand for birds singing in the morning, because it makes me feel optimistic.

I stand for my brain, because it still works.

I stand for Sherwood Anderson, despite what Garrison Keillor says, and who, by the way, is wrong.

I stand for my first bowel movement of the day so, as W.H. Auden says, I can “leave the dead concerns of yesterday behind, face with courage what is now to be.”

I stand for deadlines.

I stand for friends keeping me from sending out second-rate stuff.

I stand for Tennessee Williams’ courage.

I stand for writing a sentence that stands on its own two feet.

I stand for risk.

I stand for Robert Frost who said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

I stand for pencils.

I stand for a word that makes me jump up in my seat.

I stand for seeing my book in a bookstore.

I stand for legal pads.

I stand for the thrill of galley pages.

I stand for hating cynical writers who are sometimes very successful.

I stand for the power of punctuation.

I stand for not being ashamed of my envy.

I stand for screams of joy when I’ve written something that works.

I stand for poetry.

I stand for never getting it exactly right.

I’ve avoided that task for a while now—well, for a few years, to be exact. But I’ve been on a tear of house-and-yard-improving efforts lately, so I decided it was time.

There is only one way that I can do that, and that is with a sledgehammer.

Have you ever used one? The one we have belonged to Gaywynn’s father. It has a taped wood handle about three quarters the length of a shovel’s handle. At the base of it is a compact, bullion-shaped iron head. The head probably weighs around five pounds, maybe more. That is a lot of weight contained in a head that is so small, somewhere around 6" by 2".

Of course, many of you know this already. Many of you have not only seen a sledgehammer, you’ve used one. Maybe some of you haven’t. It’s not a tool you use every day.

The only way to demolish this brick barbecue pit is to strike it, full force, time and time again, with the sledgehammer. This is pure labor. I have to use all my effort to haul back and swing this bottom-heavy tool hard against solid bricks. I feel the big weight when I rear back and, in a slow arc, strike the wall. When I do, I’m a human wrecking ball, except that the energy and effort comes from me, not from a machine.

When I strike the brick structure with the sledgehammer, it shudders. Cracks appear, fissures streak waywardly across the surface. Sometimes a brick, or a portion of a brick, comes loose, even flies off. Other times, no. It stands up to my force. This is a well-built pit. I’m surprised at how tenacious mortar is, how it doesn’t want to relinquish its hold of the bricks it’s attached to. When I swing the sledgehammer and it crashes against the bricks, my whole body shudders, too.

After five or six swings, I’m huffing. I’m 80 years old, so I take a kind of pride in doing this at all.

There is nothing complicated about this. It’s work, pure and simple. Which is one reason why I like it. There is nothing to think about. I don’t have to worry if this is good for mankind, if I am squandering my time, if I would be better off doing something else. I know what I’m doing, and I know why I’m doing it. Ambiguity has no place here. I get so tired of my brain, of my thoughts, my thinking, my considering. Of weighing things. I’m grateful for this opportunity to quiet my mind. I see what I’ve done, and not done, clearly. God bless clarity!

Yes, I’m tired, worn out, when I quit for the day. So what? I’m supposed to be tired, worn out, at the end of the day. We have to earn our keep, don’t we? We have to give it our best. Then we can look the world in the eye. If not, our brain will emerge to taunt us. I know mine does, because I fall short so many days.

I pick up the sledgehammer once again. Man, this thing hasn’t got any lighter. The only way these bricks will come loose is if I strike them hard, full force, with this tool, again and again.

So, here we go.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know that much about Raphael. I knew the name, yes, and I had seen some of his paintings, but he occupied a vague sort of place in my mind before I went. I did have one brain-exploding experience with his work, though. This was in 1971. I was 26, in Rome, a young man on his first European adventure. I went, like everyone does, to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s ceiling. I think then I knew the name Raphael, that was all.

It was either walking to or from the Chapel that I encountered the large frescos by Raphael, including the very famous, “The School of Athens.” Well, I wasn’t prepared. I was caught off guard. Which is maybe the best way to experience great art for the first time. Unprepared. Letting the full force of the work batter your heart. Feeling the physical reaction from an astonishing presence.

The name Raphael stood for something immense after that visit to the Vatican fifty-five years ago. But I put him away, in the recesses of my mind, and others took the forefront.

The exhibition, Raphael: Sublime Poetry, was reviewed perceptively and caringly by the New York Times. It’s worth reading the review. (“For my own part,” writes the Times’ reviewer, “I left awe-struck.”) The show, as you might imagine, consists of paintings, of course, and many, many drawings, mostly studies for paintings or frescos, as well as ceiling-high tapestries made after his paintings.

Born in Urbino in 1483, Raphael died when he was just 37. He didn’t have Michelangelo’s longevity, who died at 88, so his output was less. Still, he worked prodigiously, and he was famous and celebrated in his lifetime, called the Prince of Painters.

Side note. The architect Diego Bramante, a contemporary of Raphael’s and a fellow native of Urbino, was working at the Vatican at the same time Raphael was painting his frescos. And at the same time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Can you imagine such a conflux of genius? Bramante managed to get a key to the Chapel, and when Michelangelo was away in Florence, snuck Raphael into the Chapel to have a look at the unfinished ceiling. Yes, I would’ve liked to have been there.

I have never seen anyone who could paint the human eye as wonderfully as Raphael did and hair, as well. He favored a certain shade of blue in his garments and skies that melts its way into your soul. You can see it all in “The Alba Madonna,” painted by Raphael around 1511, when he was just 28.

What is there in the exhibition is remarkable. I’m not sure I can sum up what I think Raphael’s genius and contribution is. He was a beautiful painter, to be sure. He painted beautifully. You do see the sublime. The title of the exhibition is apt. The Times’ review puts it well, saying it’s “an exhibition of such sublimity and grace it is hard to square with the cold world outside.”

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Great art shows us many things, and one of them is the best in us. We know all too well what harm humankind can do, has done, and continues to do. Appalling things that make us ashamed. But a painting by Raphael can inspire us to think that we are capable of creating a kind of breathless beauty. We will never be a Raphael, but he was one of us. He was human. He breathed air, ate, slept, worked, loved. Yes, touched by the divine, but, still, an earthly being.

He died on Good Friday in 1520. Over 500 hundred years ago. And here we are paying homage to, and being astonished and enlightened by, his genius, still.

The mystery is how can we create monsters as well as angels in this life. Walking out of the exhibition at the Met, I felt, gratefully, on the side of the angels.

I sobbed, throwing out desperate question after desperate question. I didn’t know the answers to these questions. Why?

Crying. That most natural behavior when you’re a child. But then, at a certain point, when you’re grown, not. You don’t think twice when you hear a baby cry. But an adult?

The complete vulnerability, nakedness, all of it poured out of my eyes and throat. And afterward—you all know this—stunned and exhausted, wrung out, nothing left, nothing. No answers. But blessed surrender. The release of those pent-up feelings, overcoming the instinct to keep in control, for God’s sake, not to mention the sense, in my case at least, that it’s unmanly to cry—

They have to do with all the things I worried about in my life—big and small. Now, approaching that door, I realize so many had no relevance at all.

Swearing is one of them.

I worried far too much in my life, for instance, that if I said “fuck” in the wrong company, the world would collapse. Things would fall apart, the center would not hold. The horror! But I’ve seen the normalization of that word and others like it come incredibly fast. Even in the most regulated and conservative environments.

Did you hear the mayor of Minneapolis on national television say, “ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis”?

What’s next, Sesame Street?

Oscar the Grouch: “Get me the fuck out of this fucking garbage can!”

I remember when I was a kid, back in the 1950s, there was absolutely no swearing allowed in our household. If we kids even said “damn”—well, watch out. “Goddamn” would’ve sent us to our room, or worse. I don’t think I even heard the word “fuck” anywhere until I was in my teens away in boarding school. My mother was the strictest about these kinds of matters, far more than my father. He swore mildly, much to the annoyance of my mother. “Honey! Don’t say that in front of the kids!” she’d reprimand.

Later, after my parents’ divorce, and after my mother moved to New York City and she was in her sixties, one day I was visiting her when she said about something, “I don’t give a fuck about that.”

What? Mom???????!!!!! WTF??????

You knew that word all along????

The dam burst, and after that we could hardly hold her back. What kind of sailor did I have as a mother? I have to admit, it took me a while to get used to, but I was glad she felt at ease enough, finally, to let it fly. Soon, she was using the word more than I was. I couldn’t take her anywhere.

I wonder how many of you out there experienced the same thing. You grew up in the tight-waisted 1950s with “proper” mothers, and then came the Women’s Movement with its great loosening of belts and all of a sudden your Leave It To Beaver mom is saying, “Fuck it!” Which is what she, and I suspect many other moms, wanted to say all along.

And guess what? Things didn’t fall apart. The center held. There was no horror. Nothing to worry about, and never was.

So, frankly, my dears, who gives a damn?1

She defies categorization. If you read her books, Voyage in the Dark, Good Morning, Midnight or Quartet, for example, you may find yourself unable to think of any other books to compare them to—except another book by Jean Rhys.

She may be best known for her book, Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a prequel to Jane Eyre. But that book is not what I think of when I think of Jean Rhys’ writing.

Born on the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1890, she died in England in 1979, having lived her later years mostly in obscurity. Much of her writing concerns women who are desperate and in despair, often in Paris or London, usually after a love affair gone wrong, and usually broke and in very reduced circumstances. Rhys never flinches. She stares it all in the eye with her deceptively simple prose, and writes about fear and loneliness and loss of dignity with great, searing bravery. This is not about being selectively confessional—and aren’t all confessions selective? This is about standing naked before the reader.

I’ve been re-reading her books recently. I just finished After Leaving Mr. Mackensie and, before that, Good Morning, Midnight. I’m enthralled by her writing. She makes you anxious when you read her work. You see how thin the line is between having just enough money to get by, and not having enough. Her heroines usually reside in the second category. They are often one step away from begging. Sometimes they do. Not on the street, but in a cafe in front of a former lover. You have to live next to humiliation when you enter Jean Rhys world. But, God, can she write!

Just over forty-five years ago, the Rolling Stone music critic Greil Marcus wrote a two-part appraisal of Rhys that, at last, seems equivocal to me. In the end, I can’t figure out if he thinks Rhys is a very fine writer, or not.

Fortunately, in July 2022, James Wood published a strong, clear, brilliant essay about Rhys in The New Yorker, titled “The Many Confrontations of Jean Rhys.” In it, there can be no doubt of Rhys’ achievements. He is as definitive as Marcus is vague. He writes, insightfully, about her heroines,

“Barely afloat in London or Paris, recently separated from a husband or otherwise single, the Rhys heroine is seductive, vulnerable, touchy, acute, reduced. Notably, she has no money. Moving between grim hotel rooms and the men who pay for their interest in her, she knows that, as one of these men says, women are much cheaper than the clothes they wear, since you ‘can get a very nice girl for five pounds.’”

He adds, tellingly, “Though her women don’t break out of the sexual-patronage economy, the novels do.” Yes, in the end, Rhys’ art triumphs.

Every time I read the following passage from Good Morning, Midnight, I wonder if I will ever have the guts to write with such cold-eyed candor. The heroine, typically down and out, is thinking about her situation:

“On the contrary, it’s when I am quite sane like this, when I have a couple of extra drinks and am quite sane, that I realize how lucky I am. Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it. Except, of course, that there always remains something. Yes, there always remains something….Never mind, here I am, sane and dry, with my place to hide in. What more do I want?...I’m a bit of an automaton, but sane, surely—dry, cold and sane. Now I have forgotten about dark streets, dark rivers, the pain, the struggle and the drowning….Mind you, I’m not talking about the struggle when you are strong and a good swimmer and there are willing and eager friends on the bank waiting to pull you out at the first sign of distress. I mean the real thing. You jump in with no willing and eager friends around, and when you sink you sink to the accompaniment of loud laughter.”

In later life, when she won a prestigious literary award, she said, simply, “It has come too late.”

But there are the books.

The last line of Wood’s essay is a fitting way to conclude. About Jean Rhys, he writes, “She lacked hope, but never courage.”

I moved to rural Louisiana four years ago to be with my wife, Gaywynn. She’s lived here her entire life and has a home here. So, yes, I moved for love. She’s a Cajun girl who has been to New York maybe twice, does not especially savor it, and, having lived in Louisiana most of her life, has a finite knowledge of Jewish culture. It goes without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—she does not speak Yiddish.

As part of our married life together, we’ve had fun together with my teaching her some words in Yiddish. Of course, some Yiddish words have even traveled as far as Cajun Louisiana, to this little place where we live, about 2 1/2 hours west of New Orleans, deep in the country. I was surprised to learn that Gaywynn knows schmooze, chutzpah, klutz and even shtick.

Other than that, bupkis. Nothing.

By the way, before I get too far into this, the most agile use of Yiddish by a non-Jew for comic effect is in the movie, A Mighty Wind, when Ed Begley, Jr., as Lars Olfen, speaks in a scene he overcrowds with Yiddish words. Wait—we can’t forget Jimmy Cagney speaking Yiddish in the 1932 movie Taxi! (Cagney actually did speak Yiddish.) Also, by the way, some of these Yiddish words I put down here have different spellings. Consult your rabbi.

Moving on from those acknowledgements back to Gaywynn and me. We usually have these little lessons either at the dinner table or driving in the car. She’s fascinated by Yiddish. Ironically, she learns Yiddish much faster and more securely than French, a language her Cajun grandfather spoke fluently but which she does not. Who knew?

One of the first words I taught her was meshuggeneh, which means “crazy” in Yiddish. As in, “He must be meshuggeneh to try to lose thirty pounds in ten days!” She loves that word. She learned it immediately, loves saying it, and has retained it. I know, because I came up to her up once while she was making gumbo and said,

“Quick! What’s ‘crazy’ in Yiddish??”

“Meshuggeneh,” she said, without missing a beat as she stirred her gumbo.

The next day I said to her, “If you know meshuggeneh, you need to know mishegas.”

“What’s that?”

“It means “craziness.” As in, “Who needs to deal with all that mishegas on Black Friday?”

I introduced her to one of the all-time great Yiddish words, or words in any language, schlep. Which means to go somewhere, or carry something, with difficulty. It’s most always used as a kind of complaint. The word has complaint in its DNA. As in, “I had to schlep my brother-in-law thirty miles to the dentist because his car’s in the shop.”

Next came what I consider certain core Yiddish words, like putz (a jerk), kvetch (to complain), nosh (to snack), mensch (good guy), shiksa (female, non-Jewish), mitzvah (good deed), l’chaim! (to life!). Of course, some of these words have made their way into everyday English and no longer need to be italicized. But they were new to Gaywynn.

Naturally, I had to expose her to oy vey. No, she did not know it. I told her it means something like “Oh no!” and is a way of expressing dismay or frustration, and is a must for any interested gentile who wants to learn some Yiddish.

One non-Yiddish (but Jewish) expression I taught her she was astounded by. And that is, “Did you make?” It’s used by Jewish mothers (and, in modern times, I would guess Jewish fathers, too) everywhere. It’s normally shouted through the bathroom door when their child is sitting on the toilet. This plaintive cry means, “Did you move your bowels?” Your mother wants to know! It’s important! Gaywynn had a hard time believing this expression exists.

A few days after a Yiddish lesson, I’ll ask Gaywynn for a certain English word in Yiddish she learned. Invariably, she’ll come up with the answer. Her intonation is good, too. She’s a natural!

“Who were you—Molly Goldberg in another life?” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“Never mind. Are you sure some of your ancestors didn’t come from a shtetl?”

“Shtetl?”

“Means a little town, mostly Jewish, in Eastern Europe or Russia. Think Fiddler on the Roof.”

“I think most of my ancestors are French.”

I feel this is a way for Gaywynn to feel connected to my New York, a city I hold close to my heart and whose culture I absorbed over decades and that has become a part of me. I also want to have the same knowledge of her background. We have Cajun lessons as well, because I want to know about her culture.

This morning, as I do every morning, I got up early and made myself a cup of coffee before going to my study to try to write. I turned on my computer, and, as usual, stared at it, waiting for it to tell me what to do. It never does. I drank some coffee and pondered. Would anything come? I heard Gaywynn stirring in the kitchen. She has her rituals. She always makes a cup of coffee and then sits on the couch, waking up and checking her texts and e-mails on the phone.

After a while, frustrated, I got up to go the bathroom. I walked into the living room and saw Gaywynn there, sitting on the couch. She smiled at me. She has the brightest, sunniest, most beautiful smile. It’s a lovely way to greet the day. I smiled back, said good morning and headed to the bathroom.

“Are you going to make?!?” she asked.

To the South of France. Why not? We had the fortune to find a place outside of time. It was a lovely way to live, in a house that had been built 200 years ago, hewn out of stone found not in quarries but in the fields.

It wasn’t easy at first. The village life seemed as durable and unchanging as the house and as mute. It was a while before she and I could begin to fathom the rhythm of its ways. Why didn’t the villagers respond to our greetings, except for the briefest answers? Why weren’t they the least bit interested in us? Why didn’t they accept us with open arms?

A village in Provence can be exquisite and maddening. It took time for us to see that our sojourn was merely a blink in the villagers’ unwavering eyes. We did, at last, and it was the land that led us.

As she and I woke up day after day to a sun-flooded room, our casement windows open to the new morning, we began to become part of Provence. We couldn’t look out onto the softly undulating hills, with their legions of precisely-lined vine plants, without giving away our hearts. We couldn’t smell the subtle morning air, a perfume of everything that grew there, without becoming a little more lost in love with the place. We couldn’t have our vision enhanced by the marvel of the light without wanting never to leave.

The gap between their ways and ours lessened, and that was in part due to the power of the place. We were under its sway, and so many of the things that were important to the villagers became important to us.

We walked the rough little hills above the village and saw wild thyme growing. The plant is like a dwarf version of a stunted tundra tree, all twisted and leaning. It’s a tough thing, difficult to cut. I began using it in my cooking. I soon found the taste is not the same as domesticated thyme. Like many wild versions of a plant or spice we know, its flavor is more subtle and quieter and more interesting. It’s a good metaphor for some of the villagers we met. They were wild thyme. Their tastes weren’t revealed just by a single encounter.

No, we’d never be paysans—as the villagers unhesitatingly called themselves. Not farmers, peasants. They were people rooted to the land. Eventually, most everything in Provence comes back to the land. Pays, the root word of paysan, means “country.” If you visit Provence, try to walk in the maquis or the garrigue, the scrub hills, full of dry wonders and simplicity. Let yourself become part of this remarkable land. Day by day, we surrendered to its spirit.

In surrender, Provence simplified our lives. That’s what the place will do. Simplicity will come over anyone who stays there for even more than a few days. “Only in this sun-steeped country,” Colette writes, “can a heavy table, a wicker chair, an earthenware jar crowned with flowers, and a dish whose thick enameling has run over the edge, make a complete furnishing.”

We began to understand, like everyone else who has become attached to Provence, that there is no place on earth like it. No one can possibly prepare you for this consistently ethereal level of beauty. Not any book, movie, or essay. No painting. Not these words. Nowhere else do you find such a confluence of pellucid air, fierce sun, ravishing smells and tastes and grace.

It may not be your country, but it may not altogether foreign to you, either. As M.F.K. Fisher said of her first visit to Aix-en-Provence, “I was once more in my own place, an invader of what was already mine.” It may be singular, but you can become its citizen. You may feel as if you were born there, and perhaps you were.

We had a used car we had bought, scruffy and prone to seizures, but on the whole reliable. In it, we ventured near and far in the South of France and came to see much more of the land beyond our village during that year. We went to nearby Avignon first. What a shock it was to go from our little hamlet, with its stubbornly self-important ways, to a city that has had such a prominent role on the world stage. We—at least I—felt Avignon is a sad place. Even though it’s on the lyrical Rhône, that magnificent water, the city has a melancholy air. Cities have lived lives, too, and when you walk them, you begin to see exactly who they have become. I think of Avignon as not at peace with itself. For that very reason, it’s impossible to forget.

We went to St.-Rémy in search of van Gogh’s ghost and then walked the sun-scorched hills nearby, the Alpilles, which he painted. We drove to Marseilles, a city as unjustly feared as New York, and that’s a pity, because Marseille is so sharply flavored and so alive. M.F.K. Fisher described the Marseille she loved as “mysterious, unknowable,” and I think it will haunt you and draw you back as it did her. We went to Nîmes and walked into its massive amphitheater and felt dread and awe in the face of the Roman Empire. We drove to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and watched trout swimming in the cool little stream and stayed in that pretty place until dusk at a table outdoors. We saw all these wonders and many more, and we continued to make forays into the heart of the heart of Provence all year.

But no matter how far we went, we always came home to our village. To the well-wrought house that now was our home. To the simplicity and timelessness of a life that unfolded before us. We met everyone in the place, and we began to piece together their lives. We were even luckier to get work in the fields, so we experienced Provence’s light and air and scents throughout the long days. They paid us, too, in francs, by God! The wine tasted better in our dirt-caked hands, and so did the daube I cooked for us when the day was through.

It was a privilege to go to sleep weary in our village and to wake up with that slight feeling of reluctance physical labor bestows on you every morning. We had the gift of responsibility in Provence, and how much luckier can two people get? You cannot steal idle moments when everything is given to you.

We were not used to the hard work, to the bending, pulling, digging and planting. We were old people for an hour every morning, but nothing in the world would have induced us to quit. We went home to lunch at midday as the villagers did. We spooned our soup and devoured our bread happily with the morning’s cool still hovering over us. Sundays became as precious to us as long-awaited vacations. Nothing that year was sweeter than buying villagers we liked a pastis with money we earned working their land. If you can work in Provence, even for a single day, you should do it. It will bind you closer to the place.

Despite the fact that we were frugal and that we worked, we could see our money dwindling. This alarmed us and saddened us. We didn’t want to leave. We wanted to stay forever.

But we had to leave. We had to return to New York City, to that city we no longer felt was our home and wondered if it could ever be again. (It could.) We had to say goodbye to Provence, and to the village we had grown to love and that had taken root in our souls.

Colette’s words I quoted are from her book, Break of Day. If you love Provence, or you are going to Provence for the first time, I hope you read it. The prose is as potent and sensual as those Dionysian scents distilled from Provençal flowers in Grasse. Colette had a house in St.-Tropez, and she began staying there before that fishing village was anointed by Parisians to become the place to go to. Break of Day was published in 1928, but not an observation is obsolete. Her house was above the village, and she writes about gardening, the movements of the day, her animals, the people who come and go and the delicious, sensual tastes of the place. Here, Mother Nature doesn’t wear a silky dress; she walks naked. Colette writes with a pen dipped in sun, oil, sweat and salt.

“What a country!” she exclaims. “The invader endows it with villas and garages, with motorcars and dancehalls built to look like Mas. But during the course of the centuries how many ravishers have not fallen in love with such a captive? They arrive plotting to ruin her, stop suddenly and listen to her breathing in her sleep, and then, turning silent and respectful, they softly shut the gate in the fence. Submissive to your wishes, Provence…they have no other desire, Beauty, than to serve you and enjoy it.”

Go. Submit. Surrender.

Manon is a pretty dog, a black and white female, about three years old, of indeterminate ancestry. We think there must be some Border Collie in her. That’s what people who see her for the first time often say. But we don’t really know. Clearly, she’s got more than one breed in her past.

She weighs about forty pounds. She has ears that are luxuriously soft to the touch, flopping like beauty in your hands. The tip of her tail is white. She has wide, darkish spots on her belly. Her most distinguishing feature, though, is her underbite. You can’t see it when her mouth is closed, but when it’s open, you can. It’s both comical and a bit scary.

We adopted her when she was about six months old. We don’t know what happened to her the first months of her life, but we suspect something that wasn’t good. She’s very shy around people—including me, sometimes—and can be skittish. She doesn’t like it when someone raises their voice and will slink away when they do. If you try to pet her head, she lowers it sometimes and moves out of the way. She’s much more comfortable around females and often takes to new women and girls we meet. Not so much with men. This makes me feel guilty for all past male behavior. To make a dog fear you seems to me to be a sin, but people do.

She doesn’t bark much. In fact, when we first got her, she didn’t bark at all for weeks. We thought she didn’t know how. She does, though. She will bark, but never superfluously. Usually when she hears the UPS truck approaching. As she has grown used to us and to her home, she’s become protective.

When we first brought her home, she chewed everything in sight. Probably from anxiety in being in a new place with new people. Eventually, she became accustomed to us and to our home, and she stopped. Not before many items were destroyed. She hasn’t relapsed, thankfully. Her favorite activity—what she lives and breathes for—is squirrels. To be specific, the chasing, catching and demise of said squirrels.

She’s a sweet soul. She loves to play with other dogs, but she’s deferential around them. She’s never exhibited one aggressive tendency in her life. I’ve never even heard her growl. If there was a war, she’d be a pacifist. (She once jumped back in alarm at a cricket.) She’s fleet afoot. We have three acres here in south Louisiana, including a long, stretching front lawn, and she loves to dash around it like a comet. She’ll chase and retrieve a ball and likes me chasing her. I will, until I run out of gas, which is usually soon.

She’s Gaywynn’s dog, really. When Gaywynn comes home in the evening, Manon is beside herself. We’ve all seen crazy-happy dogs greeting their owners, leaping, running in circles, just flipped out seeing their beloved human. That’s Manon greeting Gaywynn.

I’m a bit jealous, I admit. Not pathologically, I hope.

Last winter, it snowed here. It snowed heroically. We had ten inches in southern Louisiana—unheard of and spectacular. It was a snow worthy of New England. And to boot: it was a lovely snow, the kind people adore skiing down, buoyant, deep and lasting. Gaywynn took Manon out that morning when the snow was pristine. She had never seen snow before. It astonished her and made her, for a brief minute, cautious. Then she went bananas. I don’t know a prettier sight than a dog going wild in snow.

Manon is a bit mysterious. There’s part of her that she keeps to herself. She doesn’t always act like a typical dog. For instance, when we put food in her bowl, she’ll often ignore it—for the entire day. Then, for whatever reason, after leaving the food untouched all day, she’ll walk up to her bowl and eat. No rhyme or reason—to us, anyway.

We’ve grown to love her very much. Like many fervent dog owners, we talk about her when we’re not home with her, especially when we go on trips and have to board her (it’s a nice, caring place that she likes) for a few days. We might as well be talking about our child we just dropped off at college and how lonesome we are without her. It usually starts the minute we leave her. We are beside ourselves when we pick her up.

A dog adds something inexplicable to a home. Yes, affection, humor, sweetness and playfulness. Also, the delight of being around a creature who acts on pure instinct. What freedom not to have to think about everything. Manon was homeless when we found her, and now she has a home. That sense of providing a home for her partly fills a hunger in me for a home. When you give a dog a home, you give yourself a home as well.

We are grateful that she found us. Because that’s how it seems after a while. They find you. If you’re lucky. And we were. We hope we have many years with her to come. In the meantime, she’s here, with us, alive and well, youthful, the singular dog she is. We love her. Manon of the Spring.

If I had untold riches, I would go birding around the world. But since I have told riches, I do my birding locally. Around here, in southwest Louisiana, where I live, the birding is pretty good. Migration helps. Birds make their way north from their winter homes in Mexico and Central America across the Gulf of Mexico and pass through Louisiana, stopping to bulk up for the long voyage to their northern summer homes. We also have many birds who are year-round residents—herons and egrets, especially.

In early April, I went birding with a friend, David Hebert, a birder and fine photographer, at the Nature Conservancy’s Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin in southwest Louisiana. It was a good day. We met at 9AM and set off. The morning was ideal, sunny with temperatures in the 70s. The path we walked down is canopied, shadow-throwing, calm, wide.

The pathway is bordered on each side by clean, un-fetid swamp, with tall, healthy cypresses, more than I’d ever seen in Louisiana in one place. There were no other people. It was quiet, except for nature. We walked at a leisurely pace, stopping often to listen. There were birds there, we could hear them, but they were not always easy to see. But see some we did.

We were looking for Prothonotary Warblers especially. David had seen them there before in some numbers. That name sounds like an eccentric British name out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. He even has a character with a bird’s name, Peregrine Crouchback. I can see someone named Prothonotary in a Waugh novel. According to Cornell’s “All About Birds,” “The Prothonotary Warbler got its name from the bright yellow robes worn by papal clerks, known as prothonotaries, in the Roman Catholic church.”

We saw several. It’s a piercingly bright bird. I love warblers in general. They’re small, flitty birds with a variety of colors, the main one being yellow. It’s like spotting a sunburst in a tree.

David, whose business is photography, snapped away.

We saw two Barred Owls.

We saw a Northern Parula, another warbler.

We heard, but could not see, a White-eyed Vireo. They’re small birds, often hiding in underbrush, and hard to locate, with a strong sound.

We saw a Yellow-crowned Night Heron.

We saw a Red-bellied Woodpecker.

The non- or anti-birder will reply, “So what?”

I’d like to bring in the novelist Jonathan Franzen here. He’s an avid birder. He wrote a piece for National Geographic titled, “Why Birds Matter.” It’s insightful and persuasive and paywalled. National Geographic, in some instances, you should not paywall articles. You are essentially saying, “Birds matter and I’ll tell you why if you pay me.” So how important can they be, Nat. Geo.? Only to those with money?

Instead, here’s a (free) interview with Franzen via the Audubon Society. In the interview, when he’s asked why he loves birds, Franzen answers, simply, “They sing. They fly. You can actually see the whole animal taking wing. They make nests. Flight, the complexity of their behavior, their beauty, and I’ve already mentioned song, but I’ll mention it again.”

Birds make you—me, at least—less consumed with myself and bestow me with a sense of wonder. Wonder is a child-like emotion that many of us lose as adults, because it’s not sanctioned as adult-worthy. It’s sloppy and uncontained and obvious. It’s made of 100% pure, unadulterated enthusiasm. There is no arrogance in wonder, and it’s often followed, or accompanied by, caring. And caring is what we need. “We want more people to be interested in birds,” Franzen says, “because when you create somebody who cares about birds, you create somebody who is concerned about the environment.”

We finished our birding and walked back to our cars. On the way, we saw a rookery in the distance with egrets and Roseate Spoonbills perched in number in trees. We couldn’t get close, I’m sure by design, but I saw flashes of vivid pink, some in flight, that left me stunned and exuberant.

Next time, as Robert Frost says, “You come too.”