Lots going on yester- day. In the morning I partici- pated in a collective reading of Rafael Ballesteros' novel Los últimos días de Thomas de Quincy. It was a fun event held at the Civic Center and involved over a hundred people reading from the novel. My turn came almost right at the beginning. Poor Rafael was going to be there all day! The night before we had a nice dinner to celebrate the event and it was an opportunity to meet José Miguel García Vázquez, the director of the Civic Center, and Marisa Dávila, the director of cultural events, even though Marisa assured me we had met before. In any event, it was a great dinner. (More good food! It's too much–I'll never get back into good shape at this rate.) Then last night, Juvenal presented El cielo de septiembre in a really nice gathering downtown, held at Aula Sur. Soler introduced Juvenal after an introduction by Manuel Pimentel (the former minister and now director of the book's publisher) and gave a wonderful talk on their friendship and collaborations over the years. It was a masterful semblanza of the poet. Juvenal then read some of the poems from the book. There was a good turnout and it was nice to see a lot of friends there. Afterwards a fine reception at the Hotel Maestranza with the usual suspects. A dedicated handful of us kept going, went to Malacca after the reception wound down around midnight and ended up here at the apartment at 3 am with Murphy making scrambled eggs. (The photo is from the presentation of the antology of Soler's work I edited last year, with Juvenal in the foreground, followed by the mayor, Paco de la Torre, Soler, and me.)
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