The North isn't a place. It's just a direction out of the South.

When I was a little kid, of course, I was brown all summer. That's because I was free as a bird- nothing to do but catch bugs all day.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

I do some eccentric dancing.

I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity.

Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know.

Going to Vanderbilt did a lot of things for me, and one of the things it cured me of was the need to follow college football.