Swam ten laps at 6 am. Now I feel my stomach muscles. Read some Hemingway, then Carver again. Carver’s middle period. Large respect for him, the jagged voices, the catastrophes, the spare language and the striving for spare imagery. In such a landscape of struggle, panic, despair, the old images he uses have a deep and emblematic power. The hem of the garment. The simple becomes tremendous.