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.]