(Continued from 6:08 AM EDT yesterday and the day before)

"Richard Elster was seventy-three, I was less than half his age. He’d invited me to join him here, old house, under-furnished, somewhere south of nowhere in the Sonoran Desert or maybe it was the Mojave Desert or another desert altogether.* Not a long visit, he’d said."

— Don DeLillo, Point Omega

IMAGE- Detail of John Ritter's NY Times illustration for Geoff Dyer's review of 'Point Omega,' plus link to Twitter beneath illustration

Maybe it was the desert near Twentynine Palms.

IMAGE- Twentynine Palms in Geoff Dyer's review of 'Point Omega'

"Sometimes a wind comes before the rain
and sends birds sailing past the window,
spirit birds that ride the night,
stranger than dreams."

— Ending of Point Omega

* Update of Sept. 2, 2012— A different passage yields a more precise location.