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.