. . . . .

. . . .

Readying for six miles. See you when I get back. Or else, bring a spatula.

***

Canada del Oro

And I walked out to the canyon and stood on the bridge where my shadow below looked back at me looking out at the scrub in the wash. No river, no trail access. Two quail cross in shade. The sun is behind us. The bed is damp, last night's rainfall.

***

. . .

Flickr will do nothing for me, so all plans to show you the neighborhood at night or what I saw on my morning walk or who was at the birthday party, foiled. I have a picture of the Giant Sloth too and would have linked so you could see the resemblance between us. Now I'm off for my four mile stretch, downhill then uphill, ipod and camera in tow and a canister of film to drop off at the counter. The counter, destination. The race? Sun.

***

Sunrise.

***

. .

All that endearing boyish enthusiasm? Every bit genuine. But he's also got presence. I have an advisee as tall, but who comes across as gangly, a reed in the wind. Standing next to Simmons is like standing next to a wonderful granite column. So don't kid yourselves. He's a sweetheart (he insisted on buying lunch), but he's no pushover. He's a quickstudy, perceptive, clearminded (I am not: I covet), easy to talk to. Another hour and I'd have told him all my secrets (did I detect a bit of Alabama drawl beside the charm?). And he'd have let me--and have remembered every one. And I would've remembered very little of what I said--because I have a poor memory for these things--and I'd have walked away the one to benefit. As I did. Though I still don't know what to do about my watch.

***

Giant Sloth. Not just an animal. Certainly not extinct.

***

week three

Late sleeper, where did you come from? The sun is high and the pavement is hot by now. Four miles and early morning in mind last night when you drifted off. Now will you take your hat and sleeves with you?

***

Simmons and I have a lunch date at AJ's today. He has more goregous photos of desert flora up, so have a looksee at our hills so you can covet.

***

. . . . . . .

. . . . . .

We were crossing America. From the back seat of the green Monte Carlo. I had a pillow and you had a pillow. Look out the window see something we were told and Texas rolled its brown dust through the yellow grass at the shoulder. Lime green seats, radio static. Trucks in heat waves ahead, water mirage mirror. Headlights. Everything is doubled is dissolving. Until Ago. Front seat back seat inside out. Firestarter on the seat beside me, I look for something out the window, can smell the book on my hands, my thumb in my page.

***

. . . . .

Sunup and I am feeling nearly myself again. Nervous about everything, sleepless by early morning, full of work, lazy. Haven't had tea yet, for instance. That would require making it. Instead, I sit here catching up with you at your place. --Hold on a sec. Glenda's made coffee, it's done, I can hear it. She's next door feeding the gecko. Hold on while I steal her coffee.

***

Spent yesterday pulling writing from my posts that might become something more sustained, the dreams, the essay-poem sequences, the early vulnerable stuff I wrote out when no one was hanging around this workspace, the Annunciation notebook entries. I'm sure most of you would cull reams of writing, or do; as it is, I've got about eighty pages to slash through, most of it not useful, but with any daily notebook there will be daily unfinished work. So I am going back to add finish, as I'd always meant to do. One long poem-essay somewhere here. A sequence. It may become its own book, in time. Think so?

***

. . . .

Will it storm? I am trying to remember what I know. The cloud buildup, the morning's soft edges. Mares' tails, high cirrus closing in. Stratus. Take big scoops from the sky Trystan said when we swam yesterday. We practiced diving for rings. We practiced skimming the pool floor like bottom feeders. We were getting better at being fish. My mother's advice at night before bed: lay out your clothes for tomorrow so you know what you're wearing. You cannot wear everything at once.

***

. . .

I think it's caught up to me, this trip, the winter/spring marathon term. Exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. And I'm sore. And my right wrist is wrapped. Thumb is acting up. Carpal tunnel onset? All these years working on a laptop touchpad and now that I've hooked up a mouse (a cute little mouse too, candyapple red, chrome shiny, optical) I forget to use it. Today: external keyboard adapter and a splint. Wish me well. I have a lot of typing to do this summer and regular sunup programming to resume at RS.

***

Thank you:

And now, I look back on what was a contrasty, haphazard photograph and see the darkness closing in on her, a darkness from which I cannot bring her again no matter how many times I return to that negative, a negative that remains what it is until I make it something more.

***

Best place to read is in water. Foot high stack of articles on The Cenci and The Cenci (again).

***

. .

Seven: he wanted to watch the sun rise for the first time so we got up a quarter to five and made coffee and tea and hot chocolate and woke him up with a birthday monkey song and sat on the front porch with a hummingbird going at it and the moon still crystal but fading and waited until the sun was full on his face, was lighting him up and making him squint and tear. Thing about watching the sun come up is you can't watch it come up, the irony, his dad said. I waited for a shot of the hummingbird then gave up. They laughed when I turned my back to the bush. Of course he'd come back. Of course.

***

week two

postcard: Tucson

Made it late last night, grueling scary drive, but I'm here. The stars from the backyard and a glimpse of the city, the lights from the pool on our faces. I slept in a bed Trystan and Sage made up for me. They served dinner too. A wonderful mess.

***

. . . . .

Leaving day. Getting my ass in gear.

***

from the Annunciation notebook, Monday, June 16, 2003, Ithaca, NY, 8:25 a.m.

flu ache settled into the small of my back, bronchitis into my lungs. In this chilly misty damp summer I am dreaming of going home for some sun & earth.

***

. . . .

To take. I knew but forgot or dismissed it. Image making (leave it to words to make such distinctions) is the more brutal art: if I were going to hurt you I'd use words, make you out as _______. Compare you to _______, make out your likeness. I wouldn't take your picture. A picture is a point of view, an opinion, a point taken, not a point made.

***

But I drove around looking for photos to take as the readying for leaving reminds me how much leaving I'm not doing. It would be better if I felt torn. I do not feel torn. There is work to do, and I feel bored.

***

I drove past the soy processing plant, I felt something else. Wonder. It is wonderful to look at; it towers and glints. It is not fenced. I parked in front and watched steam blow off the front building and walked around in front of it and looked for ways to frame its parts. Sometimes, warm and damp and the wind down, Galesburg smells like a box of salted pretzels. The stench where I stood, vegetable rot, chemical. I breathed through my mouth and heard a voice and framed a staircase, all at once. A cascade of steps looped round a rounded wall, I recompose it in my head, the photo lost.

***

Two men in white helmets coming at me fast. One sputters he's so angry, I must clear the camera of all images and he wants to see what photos I've taken: give it to me you let me see what you've taken this is private property. But there is nothing yet to show, only the latent image in the dark, a layer of film and light curled up inside, so he taps the LCD screen as if to see something in the camera settings and releases the back cover where the cartridge lies. You've exposed the film it's film not digital I say again because he thinks I am lying. Who are you what are you doing what did you take pictures of. I was just taking pictures. You were not just taking pictures. What were you going to do with your pictures? I'm sorry I really didn't know I couldn't be here I'm leaving. What do you mean you didn't know--? Eh? Eh? What are your pictures for?

***

Email from a colleague requesting that I take it down: a photo taken just before the reading began, a smile that says (perhaps) please don't take my picture. A photo I like a lot for its expression: I see you seeing me let's get this over with shall we? I understand what you're doing but take your gaze elsewhere. Not everything you see is for the taking.

***

I took it down. What are they for? Their for-ness isn't possessive, not as you might think. But fixated, that. I am slow and want to spin in one place for ages and replicate and replicate. The camera is a pause, the stay of the still life, again-ness. They are for again where again is most unlikely.

***

What is there to see I haven't seen someplace before? They are for before-ness, also. For what is already familiar in what is revealed. In what is already behind.

***

Another take, the one that means to look like: I take after you. My purple hoodie with the college's name splayed across the front, my sneakers. I give him my name, tell him I teach. He doesn't hear or thinks I'm lying. Students always getting chased off the property, one of you one day is going to get hit by a truck that what you want? Almost apologetic.

***

Or they are not for but because of. Because I was taken up with, got taken by, and the photo is evidence of subjection, that's all. It's a small thing--a pettiness--to need evidence. To need it so badly I walked away feeling something necessary had been taken from me.

***

. . .

I'd said, oh maybe Friday. So it is Wednesday and I'm looking around at the packing and cleaning and I'm putting things away and taking things out and drawing up lists in my head. Does all of it have to be done? Books a few changes of clothes and ice chest, leave the rest, can't you?

***

- print Andy's honors ms
- fall book order, 308 and 120
- backup school computer to flash drive
- send 120 syllabus to Austin
- forward mail
- keys for Mary
- wash sheets and towels
- load photos to computer (12 rolls!)
- pick up photos from Walgreens
- take out trash
- buy film, soda, ice chest, ice, catfood
- pack clothes
- pack books
- clear locker at school
- pick up article at library
- arrange for UA library card through Knox
- map route
- pack music
- pack computer, camera, ipod
- ?

***

. .

One way to begin: why should it start with pride, "the secret persuasion of extraordinary talents"?

***

week one: summer break

Spring light shifts to summer light this morning, I notice, because the sun in my window is in my eyes and this is new. I will walk to school today, slowly. I will pack a lunch, spring greens, cold chicken breast. I will carry milk for tea, Godwin, and the camera. I will walk and read at the same time and compose a paragraph in my head and write it out when I arrive at the office. I will sit in the library where it is dark and cool and look for articles on Lives of the Necromancers and feel a thrill where there are none and a thrill where there are one or two or several. I will emerge from the dark knowing something more and feel perplexed as I do when there is more to know, to read, and squint in the sun and forget that yesterday's darkness put me in a rage.

***

from Godwin's Lives:

The human mind is of so ductile a character that, like what is affirmed of charity by the apostle, it "believeth all things, and endureth all things." We are not at liberty to trifle with the sacredness of truth. While we persuade others, we begin to deceive ourselves. Human life is a drama of that sort, that, while we act our part, and endeavour to do justice to the sentiments which are put down for us, we begin to believe we are the thing we would represent.

***

I will clear my desk and pull books from the shelves. I will send out poems. I will walk home, fat backpack on my back, camera astride, and feel the sun on my skin. I will walk and read at the same time and compose a paragraph in my head.

***

As of 1850 there are no book chapters, no journal articles, and no dissertation abstracts on Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers. Not one. The research librarian and I scratched our heads together. What's it like to be the first to write on a book (aside from Godwin's reviewing contemporaries, I mean Poe, for example, who reviewed the thing in December of 1835 for the Southern Literary Messenger)? Strange! Nothing left but to mine the canon of thought on Godwin's other works, which is crazy vast, ranging from political science to philosophy to intellectual history to literary theory and the birth of the gothic novel. I can't even think about it right now.

***

. . . . . . .

I do not want pretty, I am tired of pretty. Neon, glass, headlights, glossy leaves in a hard red light in a blur, these are not pretty. I am not angry. I am in a rage with papers strewn and towers of books and photographs. I am looking hard. I am looking hard.

***

I mean delicacy as opposed to delicate. The devouring aspect over the gentle cycle.

***

I am in an abject rage pretty much. There is work to do. Pretty does nothing but itself. I want the hard beauty ahead. Days on the road, thingness, and long writing. Everything, everything but itself.

***

They drove off this morning wearing jackets, carrying food. A long flight, a cold rain: they will soon arrive home with almost no memory of the chill in my house. I will follow in a week. By the third day going south I will roll down the windows and let the hot wind into the car. I will wear a plain loose dress and no makeup. I will look hard through my lenses. I will pack the trunk with books and paper and three changes of clothes. That is all. I will drive a full day in the desert and sip water and diet soda. I will sing and play. On repeat. And eat up the miles with my eyes and breath in exhaust and dust and the pollen grains of the six states between me. I will look for signs. I will send you my notes.

***

. . . . . .

. . . . .

. . . .

. . . grades due, library books way overdue

"Why do you circle words and make underlines in the book when you read?"

"Well--"

"--We read a book at school with no words, pictures only, so you had to just see what it was doing."

"Well, that's what my circles are for, looking at words, seeing what they're doing."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

***

. .

postcard: Chicago to Galesburg

Bones, fish, and whales, all we managed yesterday, but for two of us with a possible future in archeology and paleontology Sue was so worth it. He knows all the periods and the dinosaurs in the periods (was disappointed by Jurassic Park because most of those animals lived in the Cretaceous Period he informed his parents), and whether they were herbivores, carnivores, or scavenger omnivores (possibly the case with t-rex, he wants us to know). Many eels and turtles, some sharks, dolphins soaring and diving air-to-depths which we watched from underwater. The highlight of my day, well, I wish you could've seen it. I wish I could see it again.

***

Glenda and I went out early for coffee and film yesterday before everyone woke up. She wanted to see Monday morning Chicago, the people in the streets, the Starbucks crowd.

***

.

postcard: Chicago

The sun is full up over the buildings and the glare from the lake lights up the room. When I stand in front of the window, I can hardly keep my eyes open for all the sunlight pouring in, though I do, so I am typing through green and purple vestiges of the towers and scaffolding I can see from the window 31 floors up. Excuse me while I sit and read more Godwin while the chair is still a sunny place to blink in.

***

. . . . . . .

Sage story:

Jaimie took her to the playground at the nearby park where after they'd been there for a bit, Jaimie noticed an ant struggling to drag something home. "Hey Sagie, come over here. Come and look at this. Look at this little guy trying to carry this big load somewhere. He's working very hard, isn't he. Where do you think he's going?" She considers the ant and his burden for a moment, then stomps on it. "There. Now he's dead. Can we go home and have a poptart?"

***

commencement

Drove out to Oquawka yesterday so we could see the Mississippi and eat catfish. You know what it's like to get get three adults, a six year-old, and a two-and-a-half year-old into a car and on the road, though the river isn't 40 minutes away. He is every second talking at the top of his lungs, yesterday the geography of dinosaurs, today the composition of freshwater rivers ("only 3% fresh, Nina"). She is every second ingenious octopus: sugar packets, salt, pepper then ketchup then mustard then butter packets then other people's drinks then napkins, all stacked on the furthest end of the table in front of me. The waitress took one look at her yesterday and said: "you are busy, aren't you sweetie." We have a good laugh. You don't know the half of it, sweetie. We piled onto the airbed last night, exhausted. She fell asleep with lambie and Glenda. He stayed up for a choice between a program on giantsupersnakes or on earth's core. At the top of his lungs: "The earth's core is filled with tons and tons of molten metal and besides we're doing that because those are cool words, earth's core."

***

He used the word beautiful three times yesterday. "Look at the beautiful dandelions" and "let's go feed the beautiful koi" and "watch me eat this beautiful tomato."

***

And some of my other kids graduate today. And Stephen Colbert gets an honorary degree.

***

. . . . .

Unethical to creep around taking pictures of them while they sleep. Something wrong with creeping.

***

Everyone should have a self-inflating bed. You pull it out of the bag, put it in front of the tv, plug it into the wall, watch it rise, pile it with pillows and a big down comforter, and teddy kitty and lambie. Then you jump up and down on it. Then you watch episodes of Buffy and have a bed picnic with sugary doughnuts.

***

I made coffee hours ago. Still, they sleep.

***

. . . .

What am I up to? Not as you think, not readying for guests, grading, research, those yes, but the sweet blue cotton print dress with tiny lavender flowers and gingham trim disappeared! I am looking for it! I look for it between hangers, between stacks in storage bins, in drawers among towels and sheets, sweaters, I slipped it on only weeks ago when the spring was yet too cold to wear it, and hung it back up with the pink strap dress and the brown linen one covered in red umbrellas. I did.

***

Then just now behind the spare bed linens in the closet drawer: soft blue crumpled thing. It's dark in the back of the closet and you must push through the clothes on the racks and crouch beneath them to pull out the linen drawers which I must've done in the last few weeks--I don't remember--when the dress got put there too. My memory deludes me in other ways. The flowers are pink, the cut is all wrong. I am almost disappointed.

***

And I think: how can you live this way? With this memory that makes things up when things are lost?

***

They made it. They're here.

***