I can’t help but think of Walter Benjamin’s essay “Unpacking My Library,” about opening the crates containing his books after they were in storage for two years. You might enjoy it, available in Illuminations.

Loved the poem, too, especially the image of the car as “steel to the world of flint.”

Also, I have been working through your book, and can’t tell you enough how enjoyable it has been. I look forward to reading more of your posts in the days ahead.

Hope you had a great 1st of July!

If we keep the tradition of poetry Fridays, I just might have to contribute.

Last year I visited St. Petersburg for the first time. I certainly wanted to see everything I could, but Pushkin’s life was one of the most important things on my mind. My first reading fascinations were Pushkin’s and Lermontov’s poetry. They seemed to create that “moving poetry,” another world of adventure, nostalgia, and dark decadence, which I gratefully accepted. The carrefour of fiction and reality (from Eugene Onegin to Pushkin’s tragic and intriguing life with the enthralling prose by Dostoevsky, Shedrin, Gogol, Bulgakov, Strugatskys, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ray Bradbury to follow later)mixed into a mysterious parallel dimension, which indubitably shaped many of my views along with a hunger for adventure. These views were the catalysts for a great deal of moving, I did in my life.