so it goes.

[surfingsnow]

At the University of Iowa ... I taught two freshmen rhetoric classes four mornings a week, then went home to eat lunch and write ... Kurt Vonnegut was our neighbor. We had adjacent lawns; he lived behind us, at the top of the hill. One day that summer, he was outside on his lawn or on his front porch four times when I was outside, and we waved and called to each other. The first time, I was walking home from teaching, wearing slacks and a shirt; the next time, I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt I had put on to write; then I wore gym shorts without a shirt and drove to the track; in late afternoon, wearing another pair of slacks and another shirt, I walked up to his house to drink. He was sitting on his front porch and, as I approached, he said: "Andre, you change clothes more than a Barbie doll." (Iowa City, mid-1960s)

From "Meditations From a Movable Chair," by Andre Dubus (Random House, 1999)