10.01.06 - 10:44 a.m.

i had to hunt through my paperbacks -- the ones i keep in the spare room; the ones i never read but can't give away -- to jog my memory but, as soon as i picked it up, biplanes and prairie flashed like i was eleven again. right after emily dickinson, before the first wave of sylvia. i carried illusions: adventures of a reluctant messiah around with me for months, referring to it, dog-eared where it lent particularly good advice. jonathan livingston seagull was a little too old for me, i think, a little too inaccessible for an eleven year-old girl coming up for air after being submerged in such sad poetry, but that dust, those planes!