Increasingly, as I get older, remembering is like plowing your hand into a river of gore—the past—and rooting around for some illuminating thing, a dark crystal, that concentrated mass of old, still useful meaning.

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Yesterday children loitered around the town, in twos and threes, staring into their phones with skull-painted faces. Later I participated in the Samhain parade, a scary mammy pushing her changeling baby in a pram, up and around town, surrounded by mummers, corpse brides, tiny screaming ghouls, and lit-up creatures from dream. Afterwards I was exhausted—all that extroverting!—falling under my book into the deepest sleep.

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In a whatsapp group this morning my friends post photos of their bookshelves, recently rearranged or constructed. I envy them. All my books are piled helter-skelter, in various spaces, because there isn't a dedicated space for them, despite the gazillion rooms in this house. The mother-in-law jokes that if the price of fuel continues to rise, we'll have to start burning my books in the winter.

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