Parents:
       Just spoke with Pater. It's 10:30 in the morning. Can hear Mater's voice in the background as we plan for a late-late dinner tomorrow evening, after I'm done teaching. The excitement in her voice, the desire to please me with something special to eat, the suggestion that we all try to stop there tonight, while I toy with the idea myself, knowing I won't have time--knowing also, even as I'm jotting all this now, that in years to come, the meetings, parties, and deadlines for which I forfeited seeing my parents tonight will seem ever so paltry compared with that extra hour with a woman I have always loved, especially on a day like today, a sunny windy day in autumn, the kind that reminds me of the morning she came to pick me up at school so many years ago and rode the trolley with me, her hair in the wind as she told me not to worry about school so much or spend all my time doing homework. I overheard her telling my father the same thing today: Must he really work so much?

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Writer's block:
       I've never really believed in it. Never understood it. I am, as a writer, what certain men are as lovers: They enjoy X provided they're unfaithful to Y. I don't understand writer's block because I am an unfaithful writer. As soon as I feel a certain reluctance to touch a piece, I pick up another. Things go well with the second, until it seems to become serious, at which point I want to escape again. I begin making phone calls. Someone detains me more than I bargained for. I'm now dying to get off the phone. Only then do I experience the heartwarming welcome of the piece I had initially put aside earlier in the day. People sometimes admire my stick-to-itiveness, my discipline and devotion to work, especially when it comes to pieces that seem so "difficult" to write. They don't understand. I've been unfaithful all day.

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Looks, mine:
       Must lose weight. This thing about growing bejowled and dewlapped--not yet, not yet. I can control weight; so I'm told. It's hair I can't. Bald is chic, says my wife. No. Intentional bald is chic. The other kind is, let's just face it, bald.

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Bio:
       Something I told my students: It's not because I grew up in Egypt that I had a good story to tell. We all have good stories. It's just that to find this tale we must each travel back into our own "Egypt," into our own secret maze of desires, images, and memories--our own hell. And not everyone wants to.

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At a cocktail party:
       When do you assume that people know who you are? Thinking of my children while speaking to Mr. and Mrs. La-di-da. My only hope is that they're not asleep when we come home.