Who can I ask this very simple, very ordinary, very useful request, cribbed from Naipaul but something I've been thinking about ever since I returned from Morocco and wanted only this:

to travel around the world; to see my friends one more time, all the time; to reach my toes and bend my body into fantastic shapes; to make souffles and roast peaches in amaretto; to make flowers out of my to-do lists; to watch the deer in mating season and to understand how a tree grows and to identify mushrooms and to know the names of Everything; to write a hundred stories about the wayward; to read lots of books about birds and bees and ordinary people doing extraordinary things; more oh so much more to do!

Just give me three lives, one to write, one to read, one to experience.

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