Three days earning money in Reno did me good; it was the happy part of those Balzac novels driven by the vagaries of the hero's bank account. Digging my way out of debt an hour at a time, looking out from the fourth floor at pigeons, idiocies of casinos, slanted light on the farther hills. Remembering me ten years ago looking to me ten years ahead, the books I was supposed to have written.
The novel in progress is at its most transparent in the early morning, when the light is dim and I haven’t begun to move. The skeleton lies bare, such as it is; I can articulate the joints, ponder what add next. A kneecap, a shoulder, an extra skull. It’s slight, and I think it’s confused under the surface; something about the conceit is too dreamlike, hasn’t been laid flat. I can settle at least some of it, given time, but today there are papers to grade, and a box full of documents is following me down from Reno.
