Liz and I just got back from a day spent wandering around the Pioneer Valley with my old friends Matthew and Michelle. I've known them both for about 17 years now... back when we were first-year students at a small liberal arts college nestled in the bucolic hills of Amherst, Massachusetts. That seems like a long time ago and a million miles away... and yet somehow.. not. Both of them, in there own ways, have always had a way of kick starting my brain and sending it off in new and interesting directions. In fact, (and I've probably never said this to him before) I think Matthew might have had the single greatest influence on my reading habits for a lot of my adult life. Looking at my walls of book cases right now, I'm seeing Steve Erickson, Kenneth Patchen, H.P. Lovecraft, John Crowley, Lucius Shepard, William S. Burroughs... just a few of the authors that Matthew pointed me toward over the years that had an influence on my young adult brain. Of course those books led me in pursuit of others, and so on and so on...

I'm sleepy and nostalgic, but the "lesson to self" this evening is one that I should carve in stone: "Spend more time with old dear friends."