only poetry is possible.

Question of the day: How many writers keep getting better until the end? Or how maybe, how few? You could throw Shakespeare in there, since the Tempest is masterful. Truman Capote and Harper Lee don't count, since Capote could never finish another book after In Cold Blood and Lee could finish only one. Joyce disappeared into Finnegans and never reappeared. Who am I missing?

And I wonder why? Does genius require a physical vigor, or emotional, or both, lost over time?

Sorry, that's three questions.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm

As a performer in a previous epoch, I have been in many a green room. In the theater, the Green Room is where you wait before the performance. The green room was a place for art, and for fellowship. I was primarily an amateur, performing for love not just of theater, but of the community I found there: devoted, smart, friendly, funny, talented people, many of whom became friends for life.

When I stopped performing and turned to the more solitary work of writing, I kept the friends but lost the community. I have missed it. There have been echoes of it elsewhere. But I hope that this new Green Room will do more than echo. It will resound.

Now. Time to go on.