Ten Years Ago Today

 Feng Shui Snacks.

They look and feel right in that room.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories ... Let us converse of familiar things, in the old familiar language of the world which has so fearfully perished.

— E, A, Poe, from “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion”

This was when I was at work on The Young Lady Holding a Phone in Her Teeth:

So, on the train this morning the chap sitting across from me mistakes my momentary inactivity for an invitation to chat. Normally, that might be a perfectly fine and neighborly impulse. Only this fellow feels compelled to yammer conspiracy theory gibberish at me (“Nostradamus,” “the Masons” and  “the Seventh Seal” cropped up in the flood of urgent verbiage). Rather than pay close attention to the information which, I know deep in my heart, would have been vital to my survival through the impending zombie apocalypse, I calmly reached into my bag, withdrew my notebook, and proceeded to compose, and to pay the loon no more mind whatever. He soon found his way to a non-violent silence; and I later stepped off the train feeling that, not only had I made good progress on the double wind quintet, but that I had done a neighbor a good turn. 15 June 2015