Why do they call it Daylight Savings Time? I always think of it as Daylight Losing Time... after a week of indian summer, hot and balmy, we are now turning definitively toward the dark and cold. I know this time, like all times, contains the seeds for renewal. But this turning time is always a bit melancholy for me; the leaves are falling from the persimmon and the fig trees, the house is cold, my hands are cold as I type this, and I start counting down the days and weeks until Solstice. Six weeks. Not too bad.

And now it's also time to go back to the play, armed with all the comments and feedback I've received, to try to deepen it once more. In the meantime, I found a new name for the poetry manuscript, and sent it out again, to a bunch of contests. My father is amazed that I can keep doing this. I think it's habit by now, habit, stubbornness, doggedness. I am dogged even if I am dogless.

We went to see The Great Game: Afghanistan at the Berkeley Rep Theatre the other night. I had been so excited to see it, but I found the plays themselves somewhat flat. they seemed more issue-oriented than character-driven. I got: war is hell, Afghanis are suffering terribly, the situation for women is intolerable, and poppies are a cash crop... I already knew all that. What did I want? i was missing some kind of lightness, or humor, or theatricality, or...shoot me, whimsy. I remember seeing Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul, and yes, it was too long, but it was whimsical and crazy and funny as well as tragic, and it illuminated all of the issues I listed above. And it premiered in 2001, proving his prescience.

And now I hear my friend carla's voice in my ear: "Why are you sitting inside on a beautiful day? Go out and live, breathe, move! And so I will...