Things I did NOT see myself doing (just yet)

#377  Attempting to paraphrase a Ferdowsi - via Basil Bunting - story about the division of the world between Afaridun's sons to a 7-year-old on a train stuck somewhere outside London Bridge.

(Also, why I can write on my books... but he probably shouldn't.)

One way to improve JD Salinger

... I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page 

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil -
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet -
'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.' 

- from Billy Collins' 'Marginalia'

St Patrick of Armagh

- my new-found personal patron!

Found in books - GUEST ENTRY

I have discovered a truly marvellous proof... which this margin is too narrow to contain.

- Pierre de Fermat, in his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica (as reported in The New Yorker)

Oh, I have *totally* arrived...!