Since I gave up my car (but I still rent one when I need it), and began to rely on public transit for most of my city errands, I have enjoyed a new pleasure: people-watching. Not that I didn't always watch people, but such a wonderful range is on offer each day that I have to pay more attention. Today we will begin by discussing clothes. They are, of course, much more realistic than anything you see in magazines or store windows., that is, more practical. Always when I dress now, I think of subway stairs and escalators and whether my clothes and I can handle them. The women I watch have thought this through. They wear pants, mostly: jeans or leggings or tights, seldom skirts, ah but, the skirts! Well, some have not been considered carefully enough. . Some are so short the wearer prefers to stand rather than sit down because the skirt goes up. Some of this year's skirts have a flare and the wearer has to clutch the extra cloth when she walks or rides up the escalator so the extra material won't swirl around her hips. The ideal skirt for the subway is a long black one like the Muslim women (and girls) wear, not too long (you don't want to trip on it or get it caught in a door). but with lots of material for a good stride. I bought one and it's my first item of clothing made of bamboo. It comes from Nepal and is claimed to be fair trade and the price was right and it's totally washable and doesn't need ironing. (I'm allergic to ironing.) I love it so much I wear it to dinner parties too, even when I don't go by subway.

If I don't blog now before I leave here I'll probably lose this day. I'm reluctant to go, but I've always had difficulty breaking off one activity to begin another. I take a long time to go to bed, to stop reading, talking, sitting, gazing into space, whatever. I guess that's one symptom of my procrastination virus. Then too, consider what I'm doing: leaving the peace and solitude of myself, plunging back into the imperatives of the world. Try as I will to hang onto the peace, it ebbs, and so do I. "Give me my scallop shell of quiet.."

I didn't finish my book, as I had hoped. There was more polishing and correcting to do than I expected. I've been with it for so long, I have to be careful. There used to be a regular footer in the New Yorker - "Our Forgetful Authors" - in which inaccuracies were cited from the same book, things like forgetting the colour of a character's hair, giving the same information twice, losing track of the date or time or weather. I think computers compound these errors. Cut-and-paste jobs are so easy , and so hard to catch and delete. That's why God invented copy editors.

With these dreary thoughts, I'll wend (nice word) my way home.