So, back to life as before only everything is new and both numbers and deadlines occupy my mind unhappily.  We do what we must do, and hope to find moments of peace in the midst of it, small spaces from which to write.  When I was young, I wrote to escape and without any pressure: it seems best to regain that perspective now.  I'm not unhappy, just beleaguered with phone calls, prognosis shifts, and slips of paper demanding this or that.  This is just reality and it has its place... but so do the imagined places, the escape places.  If I don't schedule them in, the other will take over.  That settles it, then!  Bravo, a new schedule!  

Lovely time at the Key West Literary Seminar. Saw Joyce Carol Oates, William Gibson and Billy Collins. There was an earthquake yesterday and talk of a tsunami warning... It's a strange, euphoric experience after a devastating holiday season.