_when the day fell like laughter from her hat_ There is mystery also in talking, conversation. If you head north on Memorial Drive from MIT towards Harvard, you pass by John Weeks Bridge. It’s a footbridge for pedestrians to cross the Charles River, and in the summer especially, people stop there sometimes and sit or stand and talk. The sunset in late summer falls on the other side of the bridge if you stand to the south and east, and you can see heads silhouetted against the gold when the sun falls. The heads nod, turn one way or another in excitement or contemplation, or maybe there is a pause and they are just looking out over the river. I wonder often at the fluidity with which people talk. It never seemed easy for me. By the time I was 10 years old, I had lived in 3 different countries. I always thought that carried with it a certain solitude, always between cultures, languages, never really understanding what voice was my own. Speaking was a terror, trying to remember syllables so foreign to the tongue. And yet later, I chose a profession where I speak every day. But not my kind of speaking, not really. My voice came in writing. In the books I read late into the night during baseball or soccer camp. Reading when others were speaking, talking so loudly in the corridors, at meal times. Writing is a different kind of speaking, something, maybe like art, that often comes from silence. Writing, I think, doesn't mind and maybe even prefers solitude. But talking with you seems different. Maybe because you share that same solitude?