I finished Anne Tyler's latest novel, NOAH'S COMPASS, last night. I love to read Anne Tyler's novels. Is she the Nora Roberts of the slightly more literary set? Fast reads, always. I fall right in, every time. I don't resist her narrative as I often do, forcing myself to read until I am really in the book, which could take half the book, or never happen. But back to this one - a tale of a not quite present human being. The night he moves into the downsized apartment he is whacked on the head and wakes in the hospital, obsessed by the memory of being whacked on the head not existing. It turns out the man doesn't much pay attention to anything, and exists in reaction. Good lord, he's a sorry specimen. A speciMAN, a space man. Leaving a trail of wreckage in his oblivious wake. He was a philosophy student. He likes the words of philosophers. He's a little baffled by life off the page, but not in an urgent way. His first wife killed herself, his second divorced him. He has three kids, as offhandedly as it is possible to have three kids. He is 61 years old and he learns little from his accident. Grows little. We learn a lot, he accepts his lot and sits in his rocker, just as he imagined an old man would, though his memories don't flow like movies since he deflects the faintest threat of emotion. I recognized my dad, and to some extent myself. One of the cover blurbs asserts that we all have a bit of Liam in us. Not Noah. Noah's compasss refers to the fact that Noah didn't have or need one. Oy.

Weekend in Port Townsend breathing space between teaching weeks. Saturday morning I waited and waited to find out if Shawna, Todd and Quinn were coming up. They came and we walked the bay beach. Quinn set a bare foot on the damp cool sand in the late afternoon sun. She reached down to scoop some into her hand, but was not successful in getting much into her mouth since her mama caught her. What better than to spend a day with a brand new person? Quinn is enthusiastic unto whooping laughter about physical jokes, like pounding her hand against a table top or madly pumping both arms up and down repeatedly while I mimic and we both howl hilariously and clap our hands. We stare up at birds in flight, at the moon, reach out for flower buds and flat rocks. She pulls everything to her mouth; I had to exchange the daffodil stem quickly for a stick. Narcissus are poisonous. Lordy. And so frilly the little cups, so soft the sepals.