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Sy Safransky’s Notebook
July 2015
I woke up late. I suppose I needed the extra sleep, but it’s a bad way to start the day, like waking to the news that your country has done something wrong again (cut taxes for the rich; started another war), and it’s not exactly your fault — after all, you were sleeping — but it makes you ashamed nonetheless.
July 2015April 2015
I’m looking at today’s impossibly long to-do list. To accomplish everything on it will take more than twenty-four hours. To not accomplish everything will leave me ill-prepared to leave town tomorrow.
April 2015March 2015
After being married to Norma for thirty-one years, I still have such sexy dreams about her. This morning I considered waking Norma to finish what my dream Norma had started.
March 2015February 2014
So I can’t say I was surprised when I got pulled over yesterday for doing forty-seven miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone. The policeman let me off with a warning, which was more mercy than I deserved. What do I think I’m doing, rushing through these precious, unrepeatable days?
February 2014December 2013
The woman in my dream was tall, very tall, and young, very young, and happy, very happy. But what’s the difference if she was nineteen or twenty-nine or thirty-nine? What’s the difference if she was six feet tall or seven feet tall or as tall as a redwood in the forest of an old man’s longing?
December 2013November 2013
I dreamt that I was eating sunshine — as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. No worry about calories.
November 2013April 2013
Why do I imagine that the way I shape these sentences matters to anyone but me? So what if my writing is published? Hell, I’m the publisher!
April 2013March 2013
Let me start with gratitude: The world is broken in ten thousand places. Can I be thankful for the brokenness? How else can I learn to love the broken world?
March 2013February 2013
The days are getting shorter and so am I. It’s a fact. I used to be six feet tall. Last month, at my doctor’s office, the nurse checked my height and told me I was five feet ten and a half inches. I just looked at her.
February 2013January 2013
Note to self: don’t worry about your readers. Don’t worry about your reputation as a man with big ideas. You don’t feel big today.
January 2013
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