Blues

I still thoughts 

by will alone

I carry sadness

into February

sky stays blue 

as I grieve you

Parent Yawp

Just after I bragged about Nu, they're off-track with schoolwork and all of their attendant accountability/integrity issues again. 

Is the lesson that I bragged to soon? Bragged at all? Will Nu be able to get past this? Will I? UGH. I feel so helpless watching this child squander so many chances. 

Pic is to remind myself of a less complicated, cuddlier time... 

understory

I reach for the halo

orbiting our moon

lasso and escape

loops of memory

I enter at beauty--

of enflamed skies 

chevron trees stare

back, draw me stars. 

Catch Up

Despite the big freeze, there was a long walk-and-talk with BS on the Nemoke Trail yesterday.  BS never fails to surprise me with how strong and vulnerable and beautiful they are... what a gift to to have them in my life and Nu's... They plan to postpone their wedding date by a year because of the pandemic. That is the kind of responsible and resourceful action that defines so much of what they do.

Lots of catching up on work with the new issue of Jaggery, Canvas, grading and class prep. Also, Feminist Bookclub meeting today--we read Ijeoma Uluo's Mediocre. I didn't make it into the Zoom, but EM and MW went on my rec and judging from their texts post-meeting seem to have loved it--so I feel like I did my best to keep ole LFB going.

Big A has put himself in charge of groceries since he has had the vaccine and we did some meal-planning this morning. This--meal-planning--is new for us, because I like to cook extempore based on what veggies have been delivered to us and what I feel like. But he's doing multiple weekday dinners because I get home from teaching kinda late TTR, so I've given up my primary-chef privilege. Groceries (to be delivered to At too) and meal-prep notwithstanding, dinner was Acapulco to celebrate Nu who has caught up with their schoolwork! They've really clawed their way back, got such a kind and celebratory email from their homeroom teacher (teachers have been AMAZING in the pandemic!), and I'm proud of this kid for working hard and learning some life lessons on the way. 

Today is the deadline to pick in-person or virtual school for Nu for the March-June period. Big A pointed out that kids rarely get hospitalized even if they do catch Covid and that Nu might do better with some in-person instruction. Nu noted that the kids who plan to go to in-person school are frequently the ones with very conservative backgrounds and that that might put them in danger from more than just the pandemic. That decides it--virtual school it is! 

Ashtanga

My form is a machine                                                 My breath is punctuation                  

it will work all day                                                       pretending to be a landfill   

on knots of goodbye                                                   of commas, frozen periods;   

              

--going, going, gone--                                                  it  turns up the light, keeps 

hard to say--if that's                                                     inky spaces of silence and    

even--home? heaven?                                                 whispered sleep to myself    

also, which way home                                                 looks me in the eye, parses

--the world is so small                                                 the dirge of a sigh, impresses

yet full with forgetting                                                  the stray forevers of my lips

Minutiae

A choppy day full of big and small edits to other people's work; meetings galore; + followups, feedback, and fuckery. 

Met Nu's new therapist 💕; fielded pandemic tech suggestions from my mom 💕; handled paperwork and planner work. 

A loooooooong walk by myself (Wonch Park) was the best part of today. Reread favorite bits of Piranesi, started The Lost Girls, took a loooooooong bath, and fell asleep for a bit with Scout (and Nu and Huck) while watching Korra... There's an absolutely brilliant moon out now, and I'm glad what's looming is the weekend. 

"Receipts"

 

Snippet

It looks like Nu found a snow house in the backyard and Scout plans to visit with them...

 

In Order to Advance

 

Detainee

I might be free--or not; 

I don't know

for I have obeyed in advance

Distance

the atlas of my family

fold close 

the stretched out assault

Disinvited

for I have obeyed in advance

I apologize for-

giving-you-a-piece-of-my-mind

Briefly

That's Scout curled up with his nose touching the last place he'd seen me. He used to do this when he was a baby too...

Everyone seems to need me today.

Must go!

Address

From upon the belly of the same bridge

I can weigh the difference of a day

I doubt most resurrections--yet

the rhizomatic tenderness of your banks

are prayer: lilting, tidal, endlessly 

old / done / enduring--but

even in the porous ecstasy of freeze, I know

the delirium of loss, know you won't

take me any place to call home

A Yay of a Day

Oh. 

SO much sunshine today, everything seemed automatically brighter and easier. Clear skies all day... and stars and moon right now.

Temps were in the teens, but it didn't seem to matter--two long hikes--one with LB and another with BS; chats all day (fam, KB, EM, JL); and quality time with Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, which is a trippy trancey delight and I'm sad to be near the end.

I took today for myself and loved it; back to work tomorrow.

Repair

In your lapse--there's only air, 

while I keep walking 

everywhere.

Silence sings here, shame too--

like a mosquito hymn 

in my ear.

Perhaps I'm a savant of fracture

on an enraptured 

exiled page--

perhaps I've siphoned my love

into stories just a little

or too late.

Desk Picnic

Like most people I know, I slept so much better last night and awoke feeling lighter. 

I'm loving the student energy in all my classes this week (OMG, long may it continue!). All of us, me included, seem a little less shell-shocked this term. 

I'm teaching in person, by choice, and I think it's the right decision for me. Everyone has been very respectful of social distancing requirements and health checks. It's almost like we're at some futuristic health celebration when the class waves their phone screens with the green health check marks in the air.

A teeny-tiny life hack for me: It was also the day I seem to have realized that my lonely desk-picnic lunches needn't happen on breakroom napkins. My contract doesn't preclude me from bringing bright things to keep me company as I scarf my lunch down between classes. Ha. And actually, not so lonely today as there was a KCP virtual lunch. 

At Last...

Four years ago, At and Nu were newbies to protest and I had a houseful of students. So much to love then and now. 

What will I do now that I don't have to be horrified every SINGLE second that we've Twittered our way to some new calamity? Huh?

I didn't get to watch the inauguration in real time, but took in a few texts here and there and then a Zoom to toast the new admin so "things feel more real." 

I really missed my WGS folks who have helped me keep my sanity in the last four years, mostly by making ad hoc traditions of marches and protests, and linners. 

I so wish we could be together in solidarity and community again. 

Let's Goooooooooooo!!!!!

Felt like I was hitting the ground running this term, with syllabuses and diagnostics uploaded ahead of our start and even a mini lecture/poetry reading in honor of Dr. MLK Day the day before the term actually started! 

It would be nice if I could keep this up all term long. Just 13.5 weeks to go!

(P.S. Not pictured: Me all wired up and unable to sleep; up until at least 2 am--when I looked at the clock and despaired. I found this article on SEVEN types of rest on Melissa Ford's Stirrup Queens blog, loved it, and sent it to a bunch of people; I would have been sensible to have planned for some basic sleep at least.)

I Said, I Say

I said, I say

I'll rearrange for  my fingers to speak

to the clouds

unfolding like a migraine confession

I mean, I mean 

You've cried so much, your eyes

drop like pebbles

and wait to show you a way home 

I try, to free 

the mistakes I made as a parent

then I draw you,

my love, as a silent self-portrait

***********************

A detail from a mural in the Children's Garden (early morning walking date with L!).

Side Eye

At sent this picture--in which Scout appears to be eyeing At a bit judgmentally as he packs to leave for college--to family chat. Surely offering At the book about doggies is Scout's attempt to make At reconsider his decision?

Talked to At on Twitter and chat today; and gosh--I miss him fiercely. Spent some time settling things in his room and ended up clearing out a decade's worth of video games, Popular Science, and Make Magazine. We've been in this house only four years and only four years in the Alma house before that, so this stash somehow made it through three moves. Yikes. 

Also yikes, as I leaned to get another piece of mail from behind At's bookcase, I twisted something in my knee and it has felt progressively weird. It feels... feeble now, although it didn't when it actually happened.

Finalizing all the syllabuses and diagnostics for first week today. And I'm laughing at myself because the smallest things get me excited sometimes.  My latest tweak is so superficial--I changed all the font to Garamond--and I'm so inordinately chuffed about it. 

"Beam Me Up"

Mostly teaching prep and house/meal prep (my Imperfect Foods box came) today. 

Big A was mostly experienced as a napper in various settings around the house (he's coming off a spate of nightshifts). 

This "Beam-Me-Up" action in the sky is from a long walk with Nu and B.S. and it made us chuckle. Lots of talk, sharing, support, and a huge, delicious loaf of BS's banana bread that Nu and I loved (i.e. have almost finished) this afternoon.

Rumpus Room sleepover tonight with Nu, Scout, and Huck, because At left for college this morning and this is how we cope. 

Snapshot

Here I am, bookended by the two human babies who showed up randomly in their matching Christmas jammies for some Olympic-standard cuddling.

It snowed all day, so this was perfect.

(Nu and I are crushed that At will be heading back to college this weekend...)

Pongal 2021

Most years we're already back at school before Pongal comes around and the usual celebration is something hurried when the sun is no longer high in the sky.  

This year, we got to celebrate in the sunshine and make our offering at a reasonable daytime hour, with fragrant narcissus and paperwhites rounding out the pongal rice and jaggery laddu on the offering tray. To the millenary vedic sun salutation sloka*, which I was translating for the kids as I went, I added a prayer for enough Vit. D to help us through the pandemic. 

Cousin P had sent the cousin groupchat a set of truly lovely pics of their traditional celebration replete with sugarcane, outdoor hearth, and silk-clad kids. So I sent this pic back to balance things out. 

Not pictured: The very un-Pongal looking kids, one in the Phoebe Bridgers limited edition Punisher sweater they got from their older sib and the other human kid in the pink Mean Girls/Karl Marx mashup tee I gave them.

----------------------------

*Japakusuma Samkaasham Kashyapeyam Mahadhyuthim,

Tamorim Sarva Paapagnam Pranathosmi Divakaram

[You radiant as the Japa flower, heir of Kashyapa, the creator of days

destroy my darkness and all corruption I pray to you, O Sun.]

You already know

You already know 

trees understand: even a pale wilting sun 

is better than none; I am human,

I love as a reversible history. 

You already know

If you call me "sunshine," I will answer

also: "they who love sunshine," try--

I've called prayers into every reverie. 

Bigger than me

I knew I was in a new era ten years ago when I was listening to a song, and it didn't seem to be about me (in the way young girls/women are the automatic muse of so many pop songs). The song was Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" and the words were: 

Oh my little girl
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm

In my head, the "little girl" became a reference to Nu who had just told their first lie and had been reprimanded, and was now sad. 

Anyway--I was reminded of this because Tommy Raskin's life (yes, I haven't moved on) reminds me not of my own weltschmerzen, but of my children's and students' joy, their yearning for justice, for full lives, how the pandemic is the chief thief of joy RN, and their frustrations with the world... and it terrifies me.

(Pic from walk this afternoon with LB; Red Cedar River--the mallards followed me around!)

yes but also no

                    The instructions surprise:               perhaps I will solve gravity              or simply realize how unready 

                    "pour the saliva" they say              chorus my saliva's spectacle           how random, how to unbait sighs

                    I once described a snake                exist/lament/impact/about               the junction of having breath back

                    'pouring' itself down a hole             the scratching exhaustion               having my back, trusting offspring

                    the kids were so freaked out           of dying on tv every day                 to try to sidestep the cracks

Spoke too soon...

There was so much sunshine yesterday--it felt brilliant and I thought I was handling things ok, but today was a bit of a BIG crybaby day. I disappeared to cry in my closet, I cried and looked for cuddles, I cried through some cuddles. I couldn't get it right; no one could get it right. I did the usual things that cheer me up (walk, star, snack, cook, bath, chats, distance meet, etc.), but nothing would take. At least I can say I tried. 

Kinda like I did with this holiday card, which I had printed but didn't mail... and probably will never mail at this point.

Apartment Therapy's astrology section forecasts that I will have a "fruitful social life" this year, so perhaps not all is lost? Ha.

Peace Out

It was a peace-keeping kind of day around here: mediating between people who hadn't done their homework, people who'd fallen behind on housework, tracking down errant dishes (Scout and Nu, and At), errant books (At, Big A, Nu) providing emotional support for assorted causes from grad school apps to DnD character building, and trying to fake an interest in topics like conspiracy theories and eye boogers, etc.

Thankfully, my flu-shot site doesn't hurt so much anymore and I made some progress with work and teaching projects + got things arranged around the house in preparation for the crush of the oncoming weeks as term gets going. Excited! Anxious! 

Threnody

Waking in a labyrinth

with the outline of a lie

around us the dark blossoms

clinging like skin 

hidden in sight like the dark

set aside like a dementing task

hurrying to meet our dark 

corners of darkness--passion-

perversion--spill into you and me

returning to the dead lamp

you are furious as a rakshasa 

engorged, incoherent as sirens 

I'm as possessed as a pisasu

who possesses only you, and 

can die for it. Or live. Or shriek.

Every day seems an apocalypse

for L.B.

Every day seems an apocalypse

clouds plant their borders in beds,

these immense struggles go by 

*

In the harvest, the friend is a forest,

the friend who walks into the snow

measures beauty yawning in mud

*

Gathers our indecisions into words,  

into seeds, reimagining the drought 

of tongues, scattering in floods of fear

*

Here is apotheosis--we can lie down and 

not die, we can let ourselves be carried 

away by love, becoming transformed by it.

_______________________________________________

"what didn’t you do to bury me/  but you forgot that I was a seed" Dinos Christianopoulos

“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.”  Protest slogan in support of the Ayotzinapa 43 /Families Belong Together. 

Wednesday's Insanity

What an extraordinary day. Woke up to news of Georgia electing Rev. Warnock (John Lewis' pastor) and Ossoff (a sometime John Lewis intern) to the senate. Breakfast felt like an upbeat celebration. In hindsight, I wish we'd had more time to sit with this moment.

At 3:00, Nu was on their daily online-school-accountability call with Grandma S, and were told that they really should go watch the news. So we did. Watching the storming of capitol buildings by white supremacists was surreal, frustrating, and infuriating. Activists from ADAPT and BLM certainly did not get the 'I'll open the gates, hold your hand going down the stairs, and take selfies with you' treatment from the police. 

By 4:00, I was in a meeting with one of the finance guys at work who wasn't interested in the news and kept referring to higher ed as "our industry." I can't help thinking this kind of obliviousness and corporatization contributed to the mess we're in.

Tuesday Communiqué

Let this unremarkable picture mark that I ventured outdoors. It was a cold, cold walk in the snow and wind with L; I would have demurred, but L will be up north with T, so this was my only chance for some time with her for the next week.

Off the top of my head, I do feel on the brink with: the inexorable pandemic, all the feelings uncovered by the Tommy Raskin tribute, the impending crush of work, and my lack of control over any of this.

Surprisingly, I was offered the Pfizer vaccine today--not because of teaching but because of my child advocacy gig; I said yes.

Monday Memoir

I saw the cutest snowperson when I ambled over to L's house earlier today! Their bangs are like mine, but even that detail couldn't detract from their quintessential cuteness.

Nu's back in (virtual) school today, so everyone is back to waking early so we can have breakfast together and build each other up... apparently, we do this with cuddles, and riddles, and jokes, and teasing putdowns.

Speaking of school... I miss my students. There're lots of meetings starting Wednesday and I started today by writing to every one of my advisees. It's re-entry time for all of us although classes won't start until after MLK Day.

Speaking of days... It's my Boss Day! My dinner pick was poke, which we made together; my entertainment pick was Veep... again!

After everyone headed off to their rooms, I found the tribute Rep. Raskins and his spouse wrote for their child Tommy and I weep to think that someone who brought so much joy and goodness to people didn't feel enough of it themselves. 

(Related: I think of Aaron Swartz frequently. Sometimes I think about them multiple times a week--especially when my students are doing internet research. I resent that I was introduced to Aaron Swartz through his obituary--it's a particularly downhearted way to learn about an extraordinary person. I thought I'd written about this before, but a quick search revealed nothing.)

Notes from the Weekend

• Here are At and Nu in their matching new year shirts from a unisex brand--I love the silky patterns and their very distinctive cut and fit.
• I started Duolingo-ing Spanish this week--I'd like to keep it up. And I'd like to walk the Camino de Santiago someday...
• I downloaded WhatsApp to my laptop and can now send pictures and links SO easily to mom and sis.
• Big A built me a long sofa/console table to store projects, books, and work material so I can take meetings in the living room. I love our communal study/rumpus room, but sadly, we can't all be in meetings in the same room.
• And.... I had a poem accepted today. This one! about the people in this photograph!

There and Back Again

This is what I saw when I woke up this morning and I took a picture of the backyard--through the window--because I didn't think I would go outside.

But... it's At's 'Boss Day' and he picked a really simple dinner--but we didn't have enough bread to make veggie melts for everyone, so I put on my big girl winter clothes and set off for Whole Foods.

I soon realized that the roads HAD been plowed, but Big A had abandoned his car in the middle of the driveway when he came home from work this morning and was taking a nap. So either I could drive the car that has "DEFUND 50" on the front plates (I have a feeling I'm too brown for those plates) or walk. 

So I walked.

Beginning as we mean to go on

A walk in the snow with these loves... one practice I've hoped for at the beginning of many new years. 

(Yes, it was just down the street to wish TB a happy birthday before curling up cozily for most of the evening--but I'm counting it as a tiny win for today.)

Rising Up

I've loved this tree on the Red Cedar River from the first time I noticed it. Especially the branch that looks like it was laid low but decided to aim upwards anyway.

As we close out 2020 (with LB's food exchange, SD's Zoom party in MD, and calls and texts from all over the world), I want for all of us to rise up in every way in 2021.

And I'd really, really like to see my sister and parents.

"But Different than the Day Before" (Part 3892772)

Ha. How many versions of this 2020 day can there be?

It was icy in the streets and a very homebound day scaffolded by all kinds of media. 

A long yoga session on Mirror, hours of reading, syllabus prep, an adoring Prince retrospective online, and then stringing a video-list of Nirvana-Bikini Kill-Foo Fighters for Nu (the Nirvana and Bikini Kill were kinda for the WGS class). Nu has very limited screen time these days, so accompanying me on rabbit holes of 90s nostalgia is ok with them. (Evil parent laugh.)

Big A's "Impossible" spaghetti sauce for dinner, some Veep with At (from whom I received this puppy pic) and now I'm going to give Bridgerton a try by myself. 

One down...

I rode with Big A to the hospital and waited in the parking lot while he got his first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. 

There had been a previous round for his ED, but in his typical way, he'd decided that since he'd had Covid and presumably had some antibodies, he'd wait for this later round and let colleagues who hadn't had Covid go first. 💗 

Earlier this year--before the vaccine debuted--I wondered if anyone would be sending out holiday cards. I needn't have wondered. I think we actually got more cards than in previous years... there were nearly ten just today. 

Alongside the photocards of cute cousins and niblings, was one from our college prez with a handwritten greeting to me + Big A and a kind note of thanks to me. Tenure means being able to say how warm and wonderful I think this is without worrying about sounding sycophantic. 😛

Ruminations in a very minor key

1) A quiet day, still sort of recovering from Christmas. Did not want to be in closed quarters with strangers today, so I'm glad LB had cilantro to spare and was able to drop some off so I didn't have to go to the store before I made dinner tonight. 

2) Nu announced it was National Card Game Day, and we played Rummy, Coup, and Smart Ass at various times in the day to observe it 'properly.' 

3) A couple of weeks ago I gave myself some terrible bangs, but I must have decided they weren't terrible enough, so I gave myself more bangs around 1 or 2 am. Big A worked last night, and when he came home this morning, I spent like 20 minutes repeatedly yelling "Don't LOOK at me; DON'T look at me." He offered to cut my bangs next time, but we're at least four-five weeks away from being able to attempt repair. I miss going to the hairdresser, and I'm bored with my hair.

4) I can't believe I haven't brought in the hammocks and throw pillows from the backyard yet... it's not that I'm that lazy, I'm just awfully prone to wishful thinking.

By degrees

Poor Scout paid the price for repeated counter-surfing with an upset tummy. At and Nu paid too, as they got to clean him up and change the couch covers in the rumpus room. That's been the excitement today.

In other news, the pandemic rages on, and I'm dismayed at how many people on my social media and WhatsApp seem not to have let it affect their holiday plans that much. I know people have to do whatever gets them through this time, so I keep my thoughts to myself and I've never actually said anything. But it feels personal--Big A has to deal with it in the ED and the rest of us at home have been making all sorts of accommodations and adjustments around it. And of course none of this protects Big A or us if the rest of the world simply carries on in pre-pandemic ways.

Anyway.

Nu is beside me, purposely mumbling things into the Apple remote and laughing their head off at the AI suggestions. Also, Nu has been following me around for the past few days telling me about people they know vaguely at school. For example: I know N vaguely. Once they just asked me in gym: "Are you gay?" And I said "yes." And then their friend K shouted, "I knew it!"  Several rounds of three-degrees-of-middle-school later, I'm beginning to sense how much my usually too-cool and happy-to-be alone kid must miss the daily social interactions of being at school.

Small (footprint) packages

As we were putting things away yesterday, one of the things that brought me much Christmas joy is that we've honed gift-packaging waste down to practically zero. We've been reusing bags, boxes, and even collapsible gift boxes, tissue paper, and ribbon for years at this point.

Look at all this stuff ready to be packed into storage for next year!

This year's record of almost completely online shopping does mean a lot of cardboard to breakdown in the garage, but that's technically biodegradable, right? Right?

Christmas 2020

 

Almost Christmas

10:43 pm

In lieu of our usual Christmas Eve candlelight service we drove through a nearby luminaria display...

Nu and At are in bed/their rooms with their new jammies and all of their book presents...

I've prepped the breakfast pudding and the (store-bought) cinnamon rolls...

A Zoom is set up to open presents with the grandparents at 10:00 am tomorrow.

10:46 pm

Time to get back to my novel now...

"Hot Ones"

I didn't know what to make of it when one of the kids asked me, "Do you know Hot Ones?" 

Apparently, it's a long-running show where people eat progressively spicier chicken wings/cauliflower as they are being interviewed by host Sean Evans. The fam watched the Padma Lakshmi and Gordon Ramsay episodes with me to catch me up.

It's the 23rd of the month a.k.a. Big A's 'Boss Day,' and he decided that he wanted to recreate Hot Ones at home. We have a lot of hot sauces! 

Nu and I "chickened out" after the seventh; At and Big A made it to the end (obviously, Scout and Huck got some chicken but no hot sauce). Big A and I even tried to play some Buzztime Trivia to recreate some of that old eating-chicken-wings-at-Buffalo-Wild-Wings magic. Also, I did a mashup of this hot wings show and Ang's outdated greeting in ATLA to come up with "Flameo Hot Ones" just to annoy everyone. That was today's success.

Yays

A floor-to-ceiling balloon bouquet from JG showed up at dinner time. I mean--I can't even get a good picture of it, it's that huge. We can't celebrate in person, but we have a walk-and-talk planned for next week after the Christmas excitement calms down.

In the meantime, a loooong trek by myself today: I feel somehow aligned in mind and body.

I used to do it for hours in fancy (yoga) pants...

I used to do it for hours in fancy (yoga) pants... but today I did it in my jammies, for 15 minutes and I feel good... at least about restarting my yoga practice. You know when it would have been most useful? Every single day I didn't do it, probably.

Made a winter solstice meal (stew, roasted veggie salad, biscuits, and apple cider hot toddies with brandy) to share with BS and EM for good cheer. We'd planned to build a fire in the firepit, but it began to hail, so we lit some candles indoor instead. 

LB and TB were having their own solstice celebration and I was supposed to head over after dinner, but I stayed home, had a long boozy chat with EM and then Zoom-ed into JL's book club meeting of Mexican Gothic. I hadn't read it, but no one was talking about the book anyway. We haven't met in so long and everyone's hair was SO long!

I'm inordinately excited about yoga, and hangouts, and the two minutes of extra daylight we'll get tomorrow. 

Humdrum

I must have a million versions of this picture, but I love family meal times. Even when the menu is uninspiring (as it was today) and even when we're not actually at the table.

A quiet day with quiet tasks (rearranging the the snack drawer, watering all the plants, laundry). Then I finished Mrs. America with At and Nu after dinner. Wow/Ow: it was tough to watch all that second-wave momentum entropy like that...

Expiry Date

I want so much for us as I wake this morning

wordless--moving only heart, breath 

surprised at how steadfast

for much goes missing all the time: plans or

a present or something that lies, dead

as a future kindness unsaid.

I lose my sense of self, my words; I have

become that one actor who played 

that part in that one movie--

Do you remember? How much bigger could I 

have been, how much bigger my role, 

my words trawl empty

yet full of yearning; and errant words return

sad, humble. I need an army--an armor--

...I'm too numb to concede

our decline of tenderness, as every sign of 

bitterness witnesses us forward,

begrudges us to a deadline.

Light, Lighter, Lightest

Tenured and promoted! Yay! It took more years to get 'on track' given all my travels and moves and life choices and tangents and missteps. I'm way behind so many of my cohort, BUT--I'm relieved and so very thankful. I can feel my shoulders settling and the weight lifting.

After I turned in my portfolio, I felt so strongly that whatever the committee decided, I did deserve tenure. I have zero imposter syndrome, apparently. What I do have is survivors' guilt knowing there are so many equally--or more--deserving peers all over the world trying to make it in an unjust higher-ed system. Also moments of sadness knowing that it won't be what I dreamed since JG and KB, two of my besties on the third floor of SAC, resigned this year. 

The "celebration/crybaby" present Big A had been promising for weeks turned out to be... a new laptop. Whomp, whomp. I tried to fake my way into being gracious and enthusiastic about it, but honestly--it feels like a "vacuum cleaner present." I had imagined a big ol' massage chair or a hot tub or something indulgent... Ha. 

Minding the Gaps

Our Nu had been plying everyone with drinks that come with pull tabs so they could gather more pull tabs for a project. I found them a piece of white elastic to pull it together... Not only did Nu dye the elastic an edgier black, but also wove the whole thing together in a most impressive way... I'd wear that piece of jewelry! I used to wear a tab on my ring finger for a while when I was a teenager and expected some similar haphazard maneuvering, not this!

My Nu is amazing and I'm so proud of what they can do when they set their mind to it. 

Speaking of minds, I gave the kids fidget cubes and personal copies of If You're Freaking Out, Read This as a Pre-Christmas/Hanukkah present today. If ever there was a year to pay attention...

"The Long and Winding Road"

 

I know I'm a sentimental fool, but I'm always taken by surprise when the beginning of "The Long and Winding Road" makes me swell with emotion. I mean, "crying for the day" sounds just like me. LOL. There's no real reason I can fathom, and it doesn't remind me of any one person or place--just some general sense of beauty and nostalgia and malaise. 

Today: L and I discovered a new (to us!) walking path in the Eyde Woods just as the snow began...

Tomorrow: There may be some resolution on (one branch of) my long and winding road...

Time Sheets

It's 5:30 am. Nu just woke up to practice the bass clarinet and catch up with missed school work. At was up late since it was the last day to help people file for compensation from CalTrans, and there's a time lag, and also I think I saw a tweet from him in the last hour. Big A has been doing patient charts post shift after napping in the early pm. I napped from 9-11 pm last night and then I've been up scrolling, working on a poem and other stuff. (I'm going to try to get a nap in before breakfast at 7.) 

I saw everyone at breakfast and dinner, but otherwise, at least one of us has been on right round the clock... 

Scout and Huck who snooze all day seem to be the only ones with adequate sleep and solid sleep hygiene around here.

Through my Head

My children's love passes right through me

(like an arrow, like a bullet)

My parents' love steeps all through me

(like a tantrum, like a blush).

I fear death; there are deaths I fear more:

My deaf father sleeps deep

through knocking, my mother and sister 

talking--unmoving.

My tired children sleep past the blare 

of smoke alarms, heavy

I wonder if I can shake them awake

like a pair of dead batteries.

But the world does its singing, then

my body curls like smoke

plummets, coaxes with folded hands

draws doors in heartache.

So let me tell you how I scan the dates 

of people's lives, guessing--from 

the headlines of their last year--if death 

might have felt like a blessing.

_

Tiny Notes

The tiny tree went up this weekend--powered 95% by At and Nu. 

😍

While I was writing that poem about Chelli's moving day yesterday, I was trying to make the verses look like the many roofs we've been under, but it actually looks like a tree too!

Also, as she said after she read that poem, I completed it "so fast!" High praise indeed! 

😛

Moving Day 8000 Miles Away

8000 miles away

my sister is moving  

her furniture is being taken apart now

it will be put back together again, very soon.

She remembers how I arrived at her 

house in Delhi the week before she did,

how I cut my hand open unpacking boxes, how 

I made that a joke about my rakta dan--"blood sacrifice." 

I don't remember this story. But 

she giggles and so then I giggle and then 

we tell each other how much we love each other. 

When will we see each other again? (There aren't even plans.)

And I want to say: Take a break! 

Need to ask: Are you tired? Is that heavy?

But I look at the telephone; I just... miss you. 

There's more air than we can breathe between us.

Exile now feels like breaking--

like an earthquake--inside out, fragile 

as though an eggshell holding hatchlings,

a coming to--on the other side of worldliness.

There are stones in my throat all day

so I stumble. I speak slowly as though in 

a foreign language (all language feels foreign,

cannot say what I feel, clots like moonlight in my brain).

I just parrot from poems I read:

"Art thou weary? Art thou weary?" I dream you 

give the movers the address, but Bangalore traffic sounds

harmonize it into my name, send it--back in a whisper to you.

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