On a Sunday morning I liked to put on my tan linen suit and take quietly to the French quarter. "That kind of suit, you can just pull it on and go,” Bert used to say. “You can toss it in the corner for a week and when you need it you just pull it…

Disaffection has nothing to do with my reclusion. There is no one "that I no longer love." Nor am I wounded, licking. Sometimes perhaps out of boredom. Perhaps what began as a subconscious drive, creativity, had become conscious, and its sense of imperative mystery, its glamour, and its magic seemed faded. Painting, the little deliberate…

  This past winter I still pined a bit for the south, for New Orleans in particular. But it is enough now, my knowing that a city existed suited to my temperament, to my solitary engagement with it. I was a better fit than I had been. I didn't feel so odd anywhere after having…