Beforehand I was lucky enough to be treated to dinner by a quartet of fellow writers--Dylan Landis, Janice Shapiro, Susan Coll, and Joanna Smith Rakoff. There is something very special about women turning out to support each other. (They even sat together in the auditorium, cheering me on.) Afterwards, poet Tom Healy hosted a kickass reception in his Fifth Avenue apartment. I asked him if he'd been able to make the reading, having a vague sense that he'd just been...on the road. Somewhere.
"No," he explained apologetically. "I didn't make it. I just got back from mountain climbing with Russell Banks." All righty then. Best get-out-of-jail-free card, ever.
Now I am back home in DC, and "No," he explained apologetically. "I didn't make it. I just got back from mountain climbing with Russell Banks." All righty then. Best get-out-of-jail-free card, ever.
So I am doing what I often do in moments of crisis: perusing music videos on YouTube. Lately I'd have an affinity for Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," featuring Rihanna. I don't know which pains me more: that Megan Fox looks so young (she's six years younger than me) or that Dominic Monaghan looks a bit old (and he's only four years older than me). It's the eyes that give him away. "If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad," Sophia Loren once said. But when you're an artist, what equals "living well"?