Absence makes the office grow messier.

Why is it that every time I return from a trip my desk looks like someone attacked it with a leaf-blower?

I have spent the past two days cleaning, finding things I have been looking for since my last return, as well as things I never knew existed. Postcards of places I had forgotten visiting, writings I had started but never finished.

Last night’s find was a pair of desiccated crab apples I picked while at a 2006 Paris writers festival. Holding them in my hand brought back more than just their picking.

That night I had been scheduled to read with James Salter. Knowing this, I brought with me my Bantam edition of A Sport and a Pastime (1967), hoping that he might sign it. And he did! Only I never looked at what he wrote. Pulling the book from the shelf, I opened it to the page most authors write on.

"Michael --

See you again,
perhaps,

James Salter
Vincennes"