He keeps popping up in my notes. I should have a whole commonplace book devoted to him but I don't really need it because I've marked up his books so much that they have almost become commonplace books. Actually, I don't like what I know of him at all, his life, his personality, his fiction writing. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. I didn't even know that when I began to get addicted to him. At this point I can't remember how it happened, whether I came across a good line, or something I read referred to his memoirs or I just liked the title of one of his books. Great title: "The Secret Heart of the Clock.". He has written four memoirs; I own only two of them. He or someone may have called them memoirs but they're not. They are catchalls of thoughts and comments and aphorisms, some great one-liners, and some triggers that could explode into new work. I've marked some of his "situations" as possible plays or stories. It seems I brought a few quotes with me in my bundles of paper and I'll give you a few examples of things I like. I'll number them and then I don't have to put quotation marks on them. You'll know they are his. 1) Everyone can pick years to skip. 2) In old age the senses get sticky. 3) If you can't be bothered, you have already died. 4) You are less credible than Kafka because you've been living so long. 5) When you write down life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about. 6) There are too many. One dies of the overwhelming weight of the dead. 7) To write until, in the joy of writing, one no longer believes in one's own unhappiness. 8) I don't want to know what I was, I want to become what I was. 9) But the truth is that the more one has experienced, the more there is to be astonished by. Our capacity for wonder grows with experience, becomes more urgent. 10) In the end, people compare you with everything you have worshipped and held high above yourself. It's called old age. Yes, indeed.

I have had company for the past few weeks. My borrowed house has a glassed-in front porch facing southwest and it gets quite warm every afternoon with the beautiful prairie sunshine streaming in. So the windows and the floor are covered with these bugs. Fortunately, a rare visitor on the first day of my retreat came to see me and identified the little critters basking in the heat. Otherwise I might have been spooked. I still am, sort of. A few of them have come into the house. I don't mind that much but I don't like them on my papers or in my bedclothes. I try not to bother them, though I have squished a few who were invading my space. I wouldn't like to wake up with one crawling on my face. I was very influenced by Albert Schweitzer, the reverence-for-life doctor, so I try not to kill any creatures. If a bee or a wasp gets into the house I put a glass over it and a card over the glass and shake it outside. I'm not so good with mosquitos. Anyway, here we are, the boxelders and me. I looked them up on Wikipedia and it confirmed what I had already observed, that they get fooled in the fall by unexpected warmth and come out from hiding to congregate. My only acquaintance with boxelder bugs before now had been with a book of poetry by the Icelandic-American writer Bill Holm, "Boxelder Bugs Variations". I have the book but it's at home, so I had to go to Wikipedia again: ".Bill Holm, of Minneota, Minnesota creatively tackles the subject of the Boxelder bug. This thin volume includes cleverly written poetry, essays and music on the theme of the Boxelder Bug. Example...from p. 26 'The Minnesota UnderTaker, Thinking Perhaps of Future Business, Looks Me Square in the Eye During Men's Night at the Golf Course, And Says: 'I thought of you last night as I flicked a boxelder bug off my lapel.' At times humorous, at times contemplative, and at times downright weird, Holm has created a truly unique book filled with off-the-wall poetry and prose." He was a weird man, proud of his Icelandic heritage - that's how I met him. He had strong opinions about vinarterta, the iconic cake that moved to Canada and the States with the first Icelandic immigrants. Bill was adamant that it should be 5 layers and un-iced whereas many felt it should be 7 and frosted with vanilla icing. Bill died a few years ago at age 65. He looked like Santa Claus. Most Icelandic men (even hyphenated ones, like Canadian or American) do. Icelandic men end up either very lean or round with white beards. The women mostly look like sweet little butterballs. you see what I'm up against? My Icelandic genes versus Weight Watchers. Just think what I'd look like if I didn't keep fighting. I'm a slave to my DNA, like the boxelder bugs.