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I sat fixatedly staring at him. I moved my footstool around and stared from different distances, getting into it, getting into not washing, sitting there in my yakuta, not getting dressed, feeling aggrieved. How could I believe he was truly asleep? I knew his habits, his sleeping modes especially, …

He was back beside me when I got up the next morning. I made oatmeal and thought my kitchenizing would rouse him, but it didn’t. I ate alone, looking at him, wishing I had power, some kind of power.

[...] On the right breast of his dashiki was a large food or drink spot. My reaction was weirdly strong: I was ashamed! I was guilty of letting him come to appear at a function wearing dirty clothes. Of course I had been lying with a cloth over my eyes when he left, but still. Then I was doubly ash…

I said: One thing about yourself that I think you don’t appreciate is the complexity of why people tend to accept things you lay out for them as good ideas. Don’t get mad, but in a way your lifework could be described as getting people to do things you regard as improvements, better for them. You h…

The idea of a summarist had come to Nelson through contact with one of the down-on-their-luck radicals his father had put up from time to time, this one an anarchist cigarmaker from Cuba whose union had hired unemployed actors to read Calderón and Kropotkin to them while they rolled cigars. The chr…