Looks like i'm going to be working for the rival bookstore starting Monday. I told someone it's like, in Cold War imagery, a top Soviet scientist was defecting to the West--or vice versa. But really, i'm just glad i landed something quick before they packed me off to credit-card debtors' prison.

It was like crossing a swaying rope bridge, more frightening than dangerous, that disappeared into fog; & then it turned out not to be so long, after all (i've been unemployed for years at a time). This time, however, i felt like i was being followed (like so many people in the world--& whole nations--) by a whirling toothed machine advancing at an inexorable rate, ready to chew me in shreds should i falter or pause to rest. And i think what the world needs right now, almost more than love, almost more than peace--is debt amnesty. (Students of history will know that such a thing, far from being the physical impossibility we believe, has occurred repeatedly under the pressure of social change & economic catastrophe.)

But of course, that's crazy talk! You can't say that!

Thoughts on a beautiful morning, from the branch library at opening time, not without bitterness.