Theft by Finding

Dad on friendship: "Sure, some people are nice. Real nice. Nice like carpets so you can walk all over them."

Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.

In 1976 Dawn Erickson taught me that, in order to ensure good luck, you're supposed to say, "Rabbit, rabbit," on the first day of every month. It has to be the very first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn't work. I'd never been particularly superstitious, but ever since she told me, I've made it a point to follow her example.

Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to.

In first class, you count on your fellow passengers to make you feel good about yourself. You're supposed to look around with pride, telling yourself that these are your kind of people.

Harry Rowohlt, the fellow who translated my book into German and is reading with me on my tour, told me that when someone on the bus or at a nearby table in a restaurant talks on a cell phone, he likes to lean over and shout, "Come back to bed, I'm freezing."

On several occasions during my visit, she referred to herself as poor, and that depressed me. Most people would say they're broke. That word suggests a temporary setback. Poor, on the other hand, conveys a permanence.

If you talk to people, you can have whatever you want.

Another old-fashioned practice I maintain is carrying a notebook, a small one I keep in my shirt pocket and never leave the house without. In it I register all the little things that strike me, not in great detail but just quickly. The following morning I'll review what I jotted down and look for the most meaningful moment in the previous day, the one in which I felt truly present.

It's worth mentioning that this is my edit. It wasn't easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary.

After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you'd stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.