I look forward more and more to my train rides into the city. They are time to myself, really and truly. I know no one else. I disappear. As I watch the buildings of the city slip into view, I remember with nostalgia what it was like to live alone, to come and go as I pleased. I could be invisible when I chose (and sometimes even when I didn�t). It is sometimes tiring to always be in view.

I bought no books. The weight of a $50 prize proved too great. I picked up books and put them down, each one with a fatal flaw � too practical, too dull, too superficial, too large to carry home. I will come again.

I walked H. back to her house where she fed her cat, gave us both glasses of water and gave me an unexpected birthday present � a cookbook of hers that I�ve been coveting but that�s out of print. She found another copy and marked for me her favorite recipes. She also gave me a souvenir from Seattle, a small egg of what is purported to be �Angel Snot. It will join the small plastic brain that turns bloody when you squeeze it and the gyrating Elvis on my Desk of Mysterious Objects.

We slid out into the night, past a neighbor with her bicycle heading up four flights of stairs as her groceries guarded the door. We ran into two more of our number on the street outside the house of our host where there was much hugging and kissing and general exuberance before we marched in en masse in a tumble of bags and shoes. Wine and food and talk of babies (pictures too) and children going to college and how old they all get and how fast. Then the book (Eucalyptus, Murray Bail), which was more interesting than I expected but not as interesting as I wanted, a tale of tales and taletelling (the Princess, protesting her betrothal to the slayer of the dragon, chooses instead the jester whose stories made her swoon). It is hard to go. I drive downtown with the new mom and talk about breast-feeding and potty training and how amazing it is that this is what we want to talk about. I am glad for these women, glad of them, glad to now them. Suddenly I have context.

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