With my current job I travel more than I ever have. One way I stave off homesickness is by reading books my wife has given me (and rereading poems we’ve written for each other). The one I keep picking up for now is Letters to Véra, Vladimir Nabokov’s letters to Véra Slonim from their first meeting until the end of his life.

In one of the earliest letters, before their marriage, he writes:

Yes, I need you my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds.

Here’s to your weekend and to finding your fairy-tale, your tall sunflower.

Categories: family life Reading Writing

Tagged as: inspiration letters to vera life love love letters nabokov sunflowers writing

Stephen McClurg

I like red peppers and Jan Svankmajer movies.

1. Current Listening: May Day by Silica Gel

2. Current Viewing: "Uncle Yanco" (1967).

3. Current Reading: Ottessa Moshfegh: Death In Her Hands