Shadowy starry glow, shadowy starry glow.

Sometimes I end up loving pictures that may have no business being loved. This one's one of those. It's the maple in the background, backing up the starry weed: it's that dark diagonal that sinks me.

I sat with the computer last night until I wanted to be away from it until morning. Then I went home and sat in bed with it. Then I slept, and then I sat up and wrote. And now everything is back under control. I had thought I'd wait to start Heyday when everything was officially out on its winging way to England, and everything might not be on its way until tomorrow. But it's such a good-looking book--the actual book, I mean: its dustjacket, which of course won't be on the book while I read it anyway but who is anyone to ask me how I make these decisions--that I might just pick it up the moment I get home. Which means that I should probably perform my remaining obeisances and industriousnesses right quick, before leaving. Once I'm home, I'll be sunk, and loving it.

Speaking of love: I am feasting on this man's pictures. A friend wrote not so long ago that one of my bird pictures made her want to bite herself and run around the room. Wright Morris's pictures make me want to get in my car and drive away and not come back until I've found innumerable abandoned buildings to photograph head-on in bright light. His photo-text The Home Place is quite good, as well, though I kept wanting it to be Sebald's The Emigrants, and that's just not fair.

In England, the ruins are different, as are the birds. These are, of course, not the only things that make me hopeful about what I'm about to send across the Atlantic.

(Ooh, a several-hours-later postscript: turns out I'll get to start Heyday as a reward after all; the application is signed and sealed, and I'm going home to curl around a book. And to eat some toast and blackcurrant jam.)

(Another postscript, this one a picture with Miscellanie's name on it. The light's coming back, my friend. Do not slip.)