It’s funny, good funny, but I’m feeling A-plus and kind of excited about my birthday tomorrow, which hasn’t happened in a long time. I don’t mean a long time since a year ago, I mean a long time since I don’t know when. I haven’t tended to make a big deal of my birthday in recent years; really, I seem to live it at a remove. So I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s reading Leiris all day (the man’s amazing), maybe it’s the ripe Bosc pear I just savoured with a dollop of ice cream and a sprinkling of chocolate rice, maybe it’s the unexpected delight of an hour-long phone chat with Jill, I don’t know. In any case, things seem good, like a crisp morning, like a mint car, like my shoes click-clicking down the quiet of Ninth Street after a late night out, like Nutella spread generously on warm toast, like sliding across the parquet floor in my socks—arms out, smile spreading. Something like that.