No Special Writing Rituals. And My Desk

[people In 1600s] Didn't Have Many Books. They Would Have Been Staggered By The Personal Libraries We Have Today, Because Books Back Then Were Incredibly Expensive.

I'm Reading Hans Kummer's "in Quest Of The Sacred Baboon." It's Wonderful. It's A Scientist's Journal About Baboons, But It Relates To The Search For Human Origin.

In Short, It Became Possible - Never Easy, But Possible - In The Poet Auden's Phrase To Find The Mortal World Enough.

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

One Of My Favorite Writers Is Michel De Montaigne. My Wife Gave Me A Beautiful 17th-century Edition Of Montaigne's Essays Translated By John Florio. That's Probably My Most Precious Possession.