paleaswater's copy wrapped in a plastic bag inside my knapsack so it wouldn't get wet. My aunt is in there somewhere as well. Summer was when Aunt H always came visiting so I must have seen her, back from her last trip to France, about the time I was reading the book. (The identification is doubtless underlined by her dying suddenly two months later.) My memory does tend to free associate, sometimes on the most tenuous connections. For example, there was a walk along Olive St in late November of 2001, which ended up with coffee at Tasty's, and Tasty's means Point of Dreams. So now Olive is associated with that first read too. People, places, long ago events: all crowd the margins and flicker out the corner of my eye as I reread.
There's only one problem with this. Paper diaries state unarguably that in August I was reading The Armour of the Light, and that I read and finished Point of Dreams in July. And of that I remember nothing except, sort of, reading the book in my bro's hot and empty kitchen: cat-sitting while he was off in France chaperoning Aunt H.
