The other day I was talking to an interior designer and he shared his theory with me: that interior designers are the modern equivalent of the hermit. Because they're in society but not of it. They step into people's lives and then leave them and go back and live alone. So I started reading about Thomas Merton, in Guy Davenport and Ralph Eugene Meatyard's "Father Louie," which is the only book about hermits I had around the house. Thomas Merton sounds like a complicated guy and I guess now I have to read "The Seven Story Mountain." And make an effort once again to understand the Black Mountain school. But one thing Thomas Merton did is, he wrote the coolest book title ever. "Cables to the Ace."