I think what nice clouds Paris has!  What a nice sky, always changing!  Plump white clouds, tumbling in the machine. And grey ones, like the pigeons who make nests with strands of construction site metal in the flowerpot on my back porch.  White eyelet over blue silk:  a lingerie sky.

Walking up the four flights of stairs to my apartment I pause at each landing and think what nice dinners they are cooking; I try to disentangle the smells seeping out from behind doors:  stuffed cabbage?  pumpkin soup?  Then I find I've forgotten the parsley, already I forgot it yesterday, so down I go again, sniffing, to the market. Italian parsley, the flat-leafed kind.  It wasn't too late.

Bought two books at The Village Voice:  Coetzee's new one, Summertime, following on Boyhood and Youth; and Nam Le's story collection, which Odile had prominently displayed.  Nam was at Yaddo in August; he's reading at the VV on December 10th (Mavis Gallant the week before).