Ari’s Reviews > Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude > Status Update

When imagining the mosque, I didn’t imagine the things I might pass on my walk there from the harbor: the woman in the window raising a bucket on a string, the men with pushcarts of fruits and vegetables, cats dozing between the flowerpots. These are the street scenes that whisper, the particulars that makea place real, that make a trip our own.

tried not to eat the cherries as if they were M&Ms. I considered where they might have been before the man in the vest scooped them into the crinkly bag, what the farm they came from looked like, how the sun must have warmed them on the trees.

“In 2017, the New York Times asked the humorist Fran Lebowitz which three writers she would invite to a literary dinner party. “None,” she replied. “My idea of a great literary dinner party is Fran, eating alone, reading a book.”