lucia_berlin raze there's something bittersweet about falling in love with the voice of someone who's been dead for half as long as you've been alive, and knowing there's only so much of their work to dig into. only so much for you to hear. i just finished "strays". one of the best short_stories i think i've read in my life. one of the most painful, too. i'll be thinking about bobby and those dogs for a while. lucia writes: "the_moon. there's no other moon like the one on a clear new mexico night. it rises over the sandias and soothes the miles and miles of barren desert with all the quiet whiteness of a first_snow. moonlight in liza's yellow eyes and the chinaberry tree. the world just goes along. nothing much matters, you know? i mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot." it does. and it doesn't. all of this will be gone someday. even you. even me. but right_now, i'm still less than halfway through this big book of hers. and i've got two more on the shelf in my bedroom closet that i haven't read, sandwiched between "lullabies for little criminals" and "all the lost things". and there's a book of letters exchanged between her and kenward elmslie that i might pick up at some point. so she hasn't told me all her secrets yet. 240705 what's it to you? who go blather from