Saturday, April 14, 2018

The apartment was full of relatives, many of them distant. We were all preparing to go on a trip, a kind of elaborate picnic. S. had been cooking for it. Towering dishes were now arrayed on the counters, waiting to be packed away. One pasta dish was piled high in what appeared to be a flowerpot. I emerged from the bedroom in my robe, sheepish at having overslept, eager to lend a hand.

Monday, April 09, 2018

A movie about modern-day pirates who abduct people to become their slaves. One gets free and kills his captor. Toward the end of the movie an escapee gets clobbered over the head and another is recaptured to be another pirate’s slave.

Monday, April 02, 2018

I met up with P.C. and he wanted to see a Peter Sellers movie. I texted Sara to tell her I’d gone out with him. We were joined by G.C. and an academic friend of his. The theater was tiny, and it was unclear whether we’d find seats.

Later I was in a remote village in a dangerous, war-torn country, maybe Afghanistan. I observed the peoples’ rituals. They gathered in the square whenever important announcements or decisions had to be made. I came with them, sitting on the periphery. A cook, an expat from Europe somewhere, smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, and I was surprised that doing so was not a hanging offense.