The week ends and things are looking up. My block, it turns out, was created by being under the weather with no other symptoms than having no words or notes to put on paper and being tired all the time. Three days of much sleeping seems to have corrected that and I'm back on track. A few pangs of homesickness, almost completely remedied by going into town to the Petersborough Historical Society tonight for their "MacDowell Downtown" evening, held on the first Friday of each month. Tonight, they were showing "Lady in the Wings", the 1950s Hallmark of Fame movie about the MacDowells, Marian, especially. Seeing a 50-year-old movie about my life of the past 3 weeks was very strange and very moving. So little has changed, down to the lunch baskets and the hours of the meals, all the buildings look the same, everything. Really brought home the incredible tradition I've been a part of.

Spent several hours after the movie drinking red wine in an Iranian visual artist/architect's studio with another visual artist and a Japanese-American/Swedish translator trying not to look too ignorant while they discussed "theory" and Georges Bataille and Michel Foucault while in the background someone's laptop played Björk singing "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun" in Icelandic. You know, basically what I'd be doing at home.