Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.

That's the life, she said to me, as we watched a puppy chase its own tail. That's what I want to be next.
I had laughed. you would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else.
I need you, she replied.
Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.

Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.

We wanted to set our plans in motion for the first half of the season.

For the first days after we started moving in, we didn't have any homework.