Met a nearly blind woman named Ellen today in front of the Andrew Heiskell library for the blind who has been devouring books since childhood, and makes the trek to the library on 20th Street from Brooklyn via Access-a-Ride for the large type, so she can “hold a book in her hands,” and feel the paper and smell the smell of books. She was born in the Bronx and diagnosed with MS eight years ago. She says she will keep reading till she has no sight left. Her son also reads her several books a week. She lamented that people now treat library books so disrespectfully. She said she never folds down a page or cracks a binding, and she has all her childhood books pristinely awaiting her grandchildren, should they come. When we confessed we actually work in publishing she became radiant with joy and said, “You are so lucky!,” which we suppose we are.
The flamingo book came with a carton of books my mum bought from American missionary neighbors who were going back home. The sun is hot. I close my eyes and let the sun shine on my eyelids. Red tongues and beasts flutter, aureoles of red and burning blue. If I turn back to my book, the letters jumble for a moment, then they disappear into my head, and word-made flamingos are talking and wearing high heels, and I can run barefoot across China, and no beast can suck me in, for I can run and jump farther than they can.
strike out, alone or with friends, to explore my small world. Immediately behind Hellerau’s low, picturesque row houses with their prim gardens, there began a rugged, artificial wilderness made up of landfills, sand dunes, and fir groves—a stretch of hill country largely used for military exercises, such as extensive maneuvers with tanks and other machinery; that’s why the locals referred to the forest bordering on Hellerau as the ‘Russians’ copse.’ We used to spend whole afternoons there, oblivious to the past glory of the crumbling and widely mourned baroque city down in the valley. Then, one day, as I was wandering