It has been difficult, all these years, for me to say, “My teacher,” to accept with gratitude and a degree of humility that I have more to learn, and that when I’m ready to learn, the teacher will appear. Now it has happened.
Staying at The H Club
So the place breathes—if it breathes at all—an air of masculinity and propriety that seems to have disappeared but of course has not really. When I go into the dining room to eat, I am nearly always asked, “Are you meeting your husband?” (“No, I’m meeting myself”) or “Just one?” (“Isn’t one enough?”).
More About Auntie Mame
Now, all these years later, I wonder if the fact that these boys were all scions of well-known families contributed to their noteworthy mildness. Was there then—certainly not now—an emphasis on right behavior and staying out of trouble that actually corralled their adolescent male desire?
Ten Favorites: Yoga
My little practice restored my faith in one crucial phrase, one crucial possibility, which I feel to this day, and that is the possibility of achieving through my body the peace that passes understanding.
Yoga
My little practice restored my faith in one crucial phrase, one crucial possibility, which I feel to this day, and that is the possibility of achieving through my body the peace that passes understanding.
Moulded By New York City?
The city has a way of enforcing its rules on the unwary that even the Wall Street protesters might find oppressive: a way of dressing that implies a way of being, a way of talking that depends on a certain kind of conformity—the reason, in addition to the expense of living here, that writers and artists get out.
After A While In Cities…
There is nothing wrong with cities. They are occasionally beautiful, always stimulating, and as my beloved daughter-in-law, Camila, said as we were walking back last night, everyone feels at home in them—or at least in New York.
In The Heart of the Heart of the Country
My last reading—this month—in Kentucky was for another of what I call a dear audience, at the second floor library above the police station in the little outlying town of Prospect. Years ago this was a farming community; now, it has sprouted prosperous subdivisions, green with trees and grass, strip malls, gas stations—but also a small wildlife sanctuary, in easements, and residents who still remember the value of the land.
Lake Shore Limited, Penn Station to Union Station, Chicago, November 14, 2010
On the train, I reclaim my original identity, to discover, visually, at least, a part of the U.S. I have never known.