. . . . . .

Sun, big white clouds, big-haired trees waving their heads in the sky. They are wearing their new colors. Just the tips, of course. Highlights. As I did in the dream last night I looked out the open door this morning and saw the yellows and reds in the sky light and thought of the photograph I couldn't make. The film I loaded into the camera yesterday sees registers of gray.

***

. . . . .

<>
Redux: spending time trying to pull it together. There are monsters in it. My hands shook while I worked last night and before reading it aloud to H which is what I always do with the real work--read it to him. H held my hands and talked me down and said insightful things. Structure will be a problem, of course. But now is not the time for finding the book's last shape. I am dreaming it still. Right now. All the practical things around me need doing? Not getting done. Or I'm doing them wrong. I am not paying attention. I'm here stuck on this thing.



***

[disappeared it]

***

"eleven minutes of awesome": a student rehearsal full of wonderful improv courtesy of Jay Robillard, a current student of mine and the lost son in the alligator suit. Tongue included. Former student Evan Sawdey directs.

***

. . . .

Tofu for breakfast. I can't explain why it's my favorite comfort food. Makes no sense. First time I tried it I was twenty-seven. In the dining hall at Smith. I could eat it every meal now sauteed and lightly salted. And nothing else. If you let me.

***

. . .

A drop in the bucket. A few.

***

Look at that. I'm up and not tired. It's dark out--very--otherwise I'd leave here to walk in the coolness with the trains and the silly crickets. (Why are the crickets still here? Shouldn't they be dead?) --Am excited about teaching Thomas and Beulah. About the good poems pouring into workshop. I have little crushes on lots of people around me, which makes days exciting and full of thinking and dreaming, and it turns out being a student again--receiving again--brings back the most pleasureable complicities. Dependency. Stealing time. Fantasy conversations and bibliographies. Awe. The shyness in me, the clumsiness. The restlessness and wanderlust way past the other side of boredom. I want to hunker down in the library stacks where eventually you'll forget me: remember that feeling? Maybe it never left you. I met with 12 or 15 kids yesterday and enjoyed every one of them. In fact it was easy. Point is, I had it to give. They were nervous. In a good way. I'm nervous too.

***

No, no, no, no, no, no:

"And my heart had a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done that,
And it won't forgive me after all these years.

So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
Now it won't come back, cause it's oh so happy
And now I've got a hole for the world to see."

***

. .

Hello sun. Hail light! I don't understand light. My mind is all static on days of one-color light: morning may as well be five at night for I all can tell. It's the same same same. Gray from the outside in, all day the same time at the same time. I need light like I need time. But to write with light is another thing. I'm on a bend. Just now seeing. The images are impressions of lightness. And darkness where the eye is unimpressed. The film is a record of bending. The light in the trees? Oh my impressive learning trees, I will have it.

***

But indoor light? Mystery. It may well be what I took to be god was only light.

***

The lens does not see what you see, so it happens: the weak yellow light is the light of the nursury, which is also poverty, though you didn't know that then. Monarchs in red and orange and black, a mobile of transparent wings. The green house chipping away at itself. All this recalled from an indoor photo you've underexposed of paint brushes with coppery mantles, a bungle of the pupil and shutter, and there it is again. The quality of light you remember in the first green house, the curtain over the window by the crib. Now you can feel the bars of the crib, can smell the wet wood in your mouth for the crossbar is mouth height when you stand on the mattress. The walls are yellowing, the window is small and dark with soot. The light is yellow. You are not yet two.

***

week four

Sexy is in fact being brought back to Knox College.

Wonder what the Off Knox open mics are like? Here's The Interoffice Romance: Evan Sawdey and Andy Scott. Footage from Friday night's event at Pookie's Coffee Bar.

Well, we do serious things too. But nobody taped it.

***

It's that season of tension between what you put on in the morning and what the day will do all day with its clammy cold wind and its hot flashes when the clouds clear. The jacket is on, the jacket is too much. I wish I had my jacket, I wish I'd not worn a sweater. I don't know why I'm worrying over the colors in the trees, little spots of wilting orange that look as though they'll sooner drop from the tree than wait for the whole thing to burst out singing. Hot and cold. Mostly gray, mostly windy. Like a precipice: let it fall already.

***

postcard: Knox College

Please join us today, Monday, September 24 at 4 o'clock in the Alumni Room, Old Main for the first Writers' Forum of the new academic year. Featured readers will be Jake Marcet and Pat Dodge. Obviously, refreshments will be lavish.

***

Herman's 4 o'clock reading on Friday went beautifully. The students established a Facebook Hache Carrillo Fan Club group after. I suppose that's how you know they liked it. Below, my introduction.

Herman Carrillo is the author of Loosing My Espanish, a novel now available in both hardcover by Pantheon Books and paperback by Anchor Books. His stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Bomb, Ninth Letter and all kinds of other places. He was awarded a Sage Fellowship, a Provost’s Fellowship, a Newberry Library Research Grant, the 2001 Glimmer Train Fiction Open First Prize, and he was the 2002 Alan Collins Scholar for Fiction and the 2005 Shane Stevens Fellow in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He’s the recipient of both the 2001 and 2003 Arthur Lynn Andrews Prize for Best Fiction, a 2003 and 2006 shortlisting for the O. Henry Prize, a 2003 Constance Saltonstall Foundation Grant to an Individual Artist and the 2004 Iowa Award. He is currently a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of English at Cornell University, where he received his MFA and MA, and he divides his time between Ithaca, New York, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. And, as you know, he seems not be able to leave Knox College, either. He has just completed a gorgeous collection of short stories entitled Mala Noche and is, yes, already hard at work on another novel.

I know he is because he sits at my kitchen table every morning and every evening. He frowns at the screen and sips coffee from a glass. He brings home photographs, documentaries, overheard conversations, stringed instruments (--Home: I mean that when we invited Herman to come back to teach at Knox this fall, he was delighted, but you know writers sometimes don’t make B plans about where they’re going to live if a lease falls through and they end up crashing on a friend’s couch for however long it takes), Goodwill sweaters, avocados, steel wool and Comet, Camel Wides, cake from Uncle Billy’s, salt pork for picadillo, Bengay, student fiction, postcards, and House M.D.—all in the service, eventually, of making his wonderful books.

So it is, I sit with him in the mornings at the little kitchen table and listen to him bring more things into the house, more people and their voices, their voices in their languages, and I hear that bit from Ecclesiastes on repeat in my head: “And further…be admonished: of making many books there is no end.” Not, as you might think, because Herman is always at work—because he is—but because there are whole books at work in his words. The novel’s title, Loosing my Espanish, is itself a little book of languages—three words—a wild grammar full of what new thing is loosed through what is lost in translation, a hysterical thing that replaces a homogenous tongue with a multiplicity of imaginative mishearings. English speakers sometimes say: “don’t you mean ‘losing’?” And this too is a book, of assumptions about meaning, of the fluidity meanings that are crossed. In the collision between losing and loosing is a propagating strangeness, Oscar Delassantos’ self-reflexive sermons that end in an inability to account for or name, in history, within culture, and a naming that reminds us: one good strange word is itself prolific if it is at all readable. “Sin Titulo,” Herman tells me this morning when I ask (for I am an English speaker too), means “without title,” is the English equivalent of “untitled.” In a story in which so much has no words, here again: there is no end.

**

. . . . . . .

Boy did I crash. What hit me?

***

. . . . . .

. . . . .

Okay, so they get Buffy versus Dracula today. Because I can.

***

. . . .

I miss my early mornings. Get my ass up, will you? Or get me to bed on time. It's true I'm trying to do too much, that some things must give way to make room for the crowd. True too, I want it all. Long time since I've felt this got a lot of living to do, get out of my way or come along for the ride. Do. What is present to me is what has a hold on my becoming. Right now that would be a bath.

***

Highlights from last night's session on theology:

"Theology begins with revelation through faith: faith is a gift based in intelligence."

"You carry the question with you. If you do not have questions, you won't have answers."

("Have you not read my book?")

"Keys:

1. Understand the intention
2. Understand the history

The intention makes unity of what would otherwise be lost in diversity, multiplicity: the book--this collection of books, this library--is all about god becoming man."

***

. . .

Oops! Overslept, running--

***

In the Spring issue of The Georgia Review, Judith Kitchen's "Grouching toward Bethlehem: A Look at First Books" includes a write up of The Keepsake Storm. I've just seen it, am thrilled, speechless. Once again, wow and thank you.

***

. .

She sleeps.

***

Uncharacteristically personal of you, Jordan. Going soft on us? And where's my copy of The Hat?

***

Meanwhile this is all about me, the classroom junkie, who after everything missed the darkroom appointment and lecture yesterday for a faculty meeting, so pressed on towards the seminar on dialogue and Buber last night though by that time felt nothing more than just plain mean. And incoherent. Having slept, now I am looking at this schedule:

Weekly Classes

Tues. 8:00 am First Philosophy
10:15 am Natural Theology

Wed. 8:00 am Catechesis
10:15 am Philosophy of Artistic Activity
7:45 pm Introduction to Sacred Scripture

Thur. 8:00 am Introduction to Philosophy
10:15 am Taped Conference

Fri. 10:15 am Ethics
7:45 pm Spiritual Conference

Sat. 8:00 am Greek Philosophy (Seminar)
10:15 am Divine Liturgy

and thinking, really? Anyone can go? For free? "Philosophy of Artistic Activity": I teach Wednesday mornings don't you know.

***

Blustery cold day, the house is cold. Somebody's got stuff in the washer and I've got more stuff to hang and fold I'm avoiding. If we presume a semiotic no encounter is unmediated, someone said last night while we dug around for an example of I-Thou, which makes the I-Thou impossible. Anyway Buber's example is a tree. And sometimes art. Such as poetry, which is all about mediation. I sipped a diet coke and my hands shook with tiredness and I tried to dump the Corinthians from my head because it was no use. The embarrassment in the text is God of course from which we would attempt to salvage Buber to make it more philosophically intact, less sloppy, less mystic. And Zali kept saying what is most interesting once we see that it fails is Buber's You. I is implied. So what about You? When God went walking in the garden in the cool of the day, he asked the first question to appear in the Bible. The unanswerable question. He said: where are You?

***

"even as also I am known"--that's the part, isn't it? That forges You?

***

week three

Too early to call it morning, but I am up for the day. To prep for class, read Buber for Zali's seminar tonight, grade a little, talk to you. I feel quiet, though, this time of day and after my head ran on all night in my sleep. Conversations I am having, want to have, I dream. Wake feeling worn out, sleepless, but more clear on what I'm saying. --I mean I am talking to everyone about so many things at once. With students, with friends, in the classroom, on the phone, in my office, over coffee, in bars, into the night, again in the morning, with yogurt and walnuts and sometimes with Diet Mountain Dew (because I'm that kind of groggy). Some of it gorgeously complex and about books and about love; some about helplessness, trauma. Others. Some so mundane and repetitive: the stuff I can't get over. --Art. We danced on Saturday. We have readings and lectures this week. --And I am a student again of course. Of cameras, dialogue, theology. With at least three designated teachers. In the darkroom, at the seminar table, the priory. I keep thinking you must know what I mean, but you weren't kneeling on the stone floor while they chanted, while they were prostrate in long prayer and contemplation.

***

Today is my mommy's birthday. I miss my mommy. Happy birthday, mommy!

***

Hadn't thought of it before, "misery," from Latin miseria, from Latin miser, meaning "wretched"; the 51st Psalm, miserere, translating "have mercy," a prayer that says take pity on me. And this doesn't bother you? This incest? That misery ever begetting mercy leaves mercy to beget misery?

***

postcard: Knox College (or lookie what my friends are up to this week)

BOOK DISCUSSION SERIES BEGINS SEPTEMBER 18

The Knox College Library will present a series of book discussion groups starting at 7 p.m., Monday, September 18, in the Standish Room, Seymour Library. Advance registration is required at Ext. 7249. Natania Rosenfeld, English, will lead the events, starting on September 18 with a discussion of the novel "Lost in Translation," by Eva Hoffman. Future books and discussion dates are "Mr. Sammler's Planet" by Saul Bellow on October 2, "Out of Egypt" by Andre Aciman on October 23, "The Centaur in the Garden by Moacyr Scliar on October 30, and "Kaaterskill Falls" by Allegra Goodman on November 6. The discussion series is based on the theme "Between Two Worlds: Stories of Estrangement and Homecoming," and is supported by a grant from Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature, a program sponsored by Nextbook and the American Library Association.

GUREVITCH TO GIVE TALK SEPT. 20

Anthropologist Zali Gurevitch, Glossberg Visiting Israeli Scholar at Knox College, will give a talk, "Robinson Crusoe in the Land of Israel," at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, September 20, in the Alumni Room, Old Main. Gurevitch is professor of anthropology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has written extensively in the fields of identity, communication and human relations, and has published poetry and translations. His book, "On Place," will be published this year in Israel. Gurevitch earned bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees at Hebrew University, and has taught there since 1983. Gurevitch is teaching two classes at Knox this term, "Time and Place in Jewish and Israeli Thought" and "Anthropology of Dialogue." He has taught previously at Knox in 1995, 1997 and 2003. The Glossberg Visiting Israeli Scholar Program at Knox is supported by a gift from Knox College trustee Joseph Glossberg. Since its inception in 1995, the program has brought seven distinguished Israeli academics to teach and give public lectures at Knox.

CAXTON CLUB PRESENTS: HERMAN CARRILLO SEPT. 22

Caxton Club will host a reading by Herman Carrillo, the critically acclaimed author of “Loosing my Espanish,” on Friday, September 22 at 4 p.m. in the Alumni Room, Old Main. "Loosing My Espanish," is set in the Cuban-American community in Chicago. He was named a "Writer on the Verge" by the 2004 Chicago Book Expo, and has won numerous awards, including a Prose Writing Grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, a Sage Fellowship, Newberry Library Research Grant, Glimmer Train Fiction Open First Prize, and Arthur Lynn Andrews Prize for Best Fiction. Carrillo earned master of arts and master of fine arts degrees at Cornell University. He has taught at Cornell and has served as visiting writer in residence at Knox. The reading is sponsored by the Caxton Club and the John and Elaine Fellowes Fund.

OFF KNOX OPEN-MIC IS SEPT. 22

On Friday, September 22, at 7 p.m. the first Off Knox open-mic night of the season will take place at Pookies Coffee Bar, 72 South Cherry Street. Participants are given three minutes to present poetry, fiction, essay writing, a dramatic skit, a song--or anything else you can do in three minutes. Former participants include students, faculty, and staff of Knox College, as well as students and instructors from Carl Sandburg College and Galesburg High School. Interested? Contact Al Keefe (akeefe@knox.edu) or Gina Franco to get on the September 22 list. After the first 10 performances, the floor is open to anyone in the cafe. Off Knox welcomes everyone in Galesburg and the surrounding communities.

***

. . . . . . .

". . . the crucifix in the vestibule, which was carved in Pamplona, Spain in the 12th or 13th century."

***

. . . . . .

H left violins in the living room for me. His kitchen gleams. Semptember bees, brilliant sun, a walk home last night with a friend after drinks, after take out dinner and penguins at a friend's house, after coffee with friends in the late afternoon, after all day conferences with poetry students. A friend in my house on the couch watching television, smoking. Yesterday I would have made a list of all I brought to closure--still, I might--but today I wake late, I fold and hang, I make new space. It is different this year. Sudden. I'm surrounded. I live here among others.

***

. . . . .

Ten minutes to six and heading to the office. The exciting thing about this weekend is after running headlong into the term without a day of rest since arriving at Bread Loaf, I'll catch up by Sunday evening. With sleep and work. It's inevitable because at some point there is no choice. Things come to an end. And you know what? Saturday I'll take a roll of photos, and Sunday I'll develop them. Myself. And you know what else? I'm going back. Sunday morning. You know they offer individual silent retreats? I've heard of writers doing that. But I suppose it's cheating to take a notebook to a silent retreat.

***

I have postcards to send of all we're doing at Knox this term. Look for them.

***

. . . .

Was dreaming of having canceled the day of conferences when H woke me and said you have an hour and ten minutes to get to work. Illness. Yesterday morning again the chills and fever and my nose burning. By afternoon when I went to the darkroom I was floating and aching. I felt the sidewalk through my shoes hammer in my head. I couldn't understand what I was told about the film process and the handouts made me tired. I thought: if this is all there is to my life, I don't care at all. And then: whoa! Get thee to bed, woman. But I didn't right away because I had a meeting at 8 that went just late enough, so here I am again dreaming of sleep.

***

First Bob and then the Dean watched me have fits over the failing copier yesterday morning. They both looked surprised. And scared. The Dean said, "I'll go get Jackie," and Jackie spoke to me in a calm soothing voice and walked me downstairs to the new copier in the Business Office. H says: when you get like that bats and shit fly out of your hair and all need beware. I'm learning I have this effect on people. I didn't know.

***

--Meanwhile what a beautiful thing to get to sit around and talk about poems all day. All day. I'm very lucky, I know. What today looks like? Wow and thanks.

***

. . .

Bath is running, tea is on. I'm up and not as worn out. There is Dracula this morning and that's exciting. Workshop begins Friday. Today we gel. That's exciting too. This getting to bed by ten thing might even work. Wish me luck with getting today all done today. My email boxes are overflowing.

***

So it turns out Michael was referencing ("theology is all about desire") the Pope. In a way.

Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure "sex", has become a commodity, a mere "thing" to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great "yes" to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. --Deus Caritas Est

***

. .

I said I would, so I am. Driving somewhere out near Kickapoo to talk to a Father. The reasons were clear just two weeks ago. But losing focus might mean greater depth of field, later. I'll let you know how it goes. Right now I'm nervous and overwhelmed by details landing on my desk that must be seen to before real work can be done. You're not interested in this, I'm not either, so together we'll wait and see what arises from the slop.

***

I did mean priest. But the secularity of the word "father" is always good for a cheap thrill, so I went in fear and made father jokes for solace on the way and sang with Axl Rose on the radio at the top of my lungs Sweet Child O' Mine and was given, again, this time by Father Joseph Mary Prior of the Congregation of St. John near Kickapoo Illinois (who is really quite wonderful, and the place too: wonderful) the parable of the father who lets loose his wastrel son into the wide and difficult world and who looks to the horizon for his son's return each day with both emptiness and hope tightening his chest. Especially emptiness. Of course I almost joke about the daughter. Where is she?

***

Catholic until seven, then nothing. Then a series of Pentecostal churches my mother joined. I tell him the story of kneeling in front of the entire congregation while the church elders layed fervent hands on me and prayed in tongues that I too might get the gift. Tongues from the Holy Spirit. I was ten and suspicious. Humiliated and full of loathing for all the loathing my questions met with. For my self-imposed imposterhood. I knew I was evil, if they didn't. I was up there for nearly an hour and wanted so badly to stop I nearly made something up so they would let me go. --Nothing happened, he said. He does not nod or smile. It is a paraphrase meant to help me move elsewhere. I hear you, it means.

***

--Right. Nothing happened. I get stuck there.

***

I don't mean my irreverence. What's happening now is I can't get near a Catholic mass without feeling vulnerable and exhausted and the uncontrollable need to cry. I'm serious. The kind of crying you do as a kid that hurts more than you thought imaginable and that leaves you shaken and hiccupping and convinced that after all you are utterly alone and without a purpose in this world. Which is how a kid probably feels after a belting. Like it hurts too much to believe in much of anything besides pain since pain at least proves to be the real thing, is self-evident. This is not exactly right. I'm trying to sort it out. I sat in the chapel for a few minutes before my meeting and wrestled with my feelings and told myself if you're sniveling when the Father comes for you you've wasted this meeting on tears. Is that what you want? Is it? Okay then. Shut up before I really give you something to cry about.

***

What opens the mass waterworks is a shift, a deep shift in the middle of my head and chest and groin from something upright autonomous wry and irreverent to a reverence that looks and feels like crumpled Kleenex.

***

It is pathetic. It tells you how fearfully indecisive I am. I could procrastinate my life away before believing one way or the other--however much I might want to believe, well, something, finally. It's not that I need a faith system, no. The madness is there's no way out of one. You're deluded into a faith system no matter what you do. The fantasy of there-is-a-God and the fantasy of atheism are the same. Both make very desirable Truth claims. Both are religions.

***

In Tarot the final card in the major deck, the Universe, the wayfarer before the throne of God, incredibly beautiful. The wayfarer before the throne of God, face to face. I always imagined them looking at each other, laughing. Possibly telling father jokes.

***

Homework: did you know the Catechism of the Catholic Church is eight hundred and three pages long? And Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est a mere twenty-six pages after printing? Father Joseph asks me just as I'm leaving: you do want to go to heaven? He is not threatening, but asking, genuinely, as if to suggest there are options I haven't considered. It's true. This hasn't occurred to me before, not as something else that exists in the divide between this man and me. Not as another part of the story I dismiss as not useful. I say, well it would be nice to get it right here, before. He says, yes of course here first. He laughs. We have been joking, I see.

***

week two

Slumber party continues. Up till midnight talking about: care, paying attention. Not just that but the whole of Saturday given over to a departmental retreat. I'm too tired to be up, but there is thinking to do for teaching and a document to make and laundry and the cool air with rain and thunder.

***

Okay, so I fell asleep reading on the couch. Am now racing off to the office. Heard H wake up this morning with an "oh fuck." No more slumber party. These people have work to do.

***

. . . . . . .

. . . . .

I said have you eaten, would you like to go eat? --No, I'd like to stay in. The three of us on the porch talking about writing books. About the dying plants and how I haven't watered them. I am being teased too because Zali brought me a gift, "an icon from the Holy Sepulchre," and it comes wrapped in an Arabic newspaper, goldleaf madonna and baby, Byzantine style, handmade stamped, and all I can ask is "where?" Where did it come from? "What do you mean 'where,' Catholic that you are, the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, in the Old City. Do you know the Old City? You want me to describe to you how to get there?" But I'm astonished. It's never occured to me to make a pilgrimmage, to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, to the place where one could say a god chose to die and be buried. And to come back from the dead? That part of the story, that it has a place you can get to, that Zali visited and returned from there, for me, that the place arrives in a plastic bag and newsprint swept in Arabic, that he carried it in his suitcase? It has no place in my mind. But in his place the place and all its worries are commonplace. The place and its fires. He walked in, made a purchase, walked out, flew here, hands it to me. Here.

***

They are nailed to the wall above the shrine. They are exquisite.

***

I said I'm going to the store I'm going to cook and they said are you sure and okay okay because I wanted avocados and cilantro for our chicken and a green salad and a yellow bell. So I cooked a few simple things when I got back and Herman said I know what we'll do! And they moved the kitchen table out to the porch and we ate suspended in the dark with the trains and the red lanterns and the candles Herman lit, outside on the balcony by the tree tops, and we talked about writing books and about things we dream.

***

"The dream procrastinates because it doesn't know what the secret is yet either."

***

. . . . (first day of school)

(drawing by Zali Gurevitch)

Of course I didn't sleep. Or I did and dreamt of teaching. But where are the butterflies? I am thinking like a student: first photography class today. Am reading I and Thou for Zali's seminar. It's dark and the crickets still believe it is nighttime, still summer. Zali said: we will talk about why Buber is, perhaps, full of shit. Here we are at Coney Island sipping cokes under the red and white umbrella on Labor Day. What will he say of the Symposium then? Of Bakhtin? --Herman arrived last night and found me still in the office spinning in circles. I gave up at eight-thirty when I lost a manuscript I'd just printed (left it in the bathroom) and could see myself from the air spinning in my box. We came home. Then we stayed up talking. We both needed sleep, but it's like a slumber party around here. My friend sleeping in my house. And Zali and Herman will meet each other today. I mean, you can't imagine. Who can sleep?

There they are.

!

Butterflies.

***

. . .

You might've mentioned I might be getting sick. Would've explained a lot. All that sleep and aching. Lack of interest in, well, almost everything. The muddle--I've been so confused, so slow to process. Overwhelmed. And emotional. Babysat for a friend yesterday and wanted to cry with the baby. Did. The sneezing. The tiredness in my face, red eyes. Then the telltale chills and the fever this morning on waking in the living room because that's where I decided to lie down for a bit around six last night. Then the mind saying, ah this again, but it's not so bad, this we know what to do with. Of course I'm relieved it's just a cold and not me losing my mind. --Only Herman arrives today and I've yet to wash sheets and towels for him and to finish making room in the bedroom. And I don't want him to get sick. And class begins tomorrow. There is that, too. Well, so let's go boil some water and slice open a lemon. That's what my mother would do.

***

Wish I could be there. Been a long time since I partied at Hotel Congress. And I want my own Spork.

***

Fuck this makes me sad. Stabbed in the heart sad.

***

. .

Disarray. The bins of clothes, once again. Is there a better way to do this shift of seasons, the return home with the big suitcase? I can almost not bear to put the summer dresses away, not just as I got to wear them. But there is a steady chill in the house, the one that means the dresses are now for looking at.

***

week one, fall 2006

All morning a dazy funk, something about the light (oppressive, shifting in and out of a murk that feels too bright and too dark at once) and about sleeping too much, though I was too tired to rise with the alarm. Dreamt of being back at Bread Loaf but without the trees. White corridors, spare white dormitory rooms, an appointment with someone I was to meet but kept missing. No one I really know or met in Vermont. The whole day feels that way. A missed appointment. A missed deadline, opportunity. What have I done? The kiddos are pre-enrolled, met with them all day, am now done and feeling the next wave of things that ought to get done immediately. I am deleting email I either did or did not deal with months ago. Delete the whole box. That'll fix it.

***

Zali walked into my office this morning, a surprise. It's been three years since I've seen him and I didn't know when he'd arrive to teach this term. We went for coffee but it's Labor Day and all the coffee places are closed, so we went to Coney Island and bought cokes and sat under a red and white umbrella and watched the parade dissipate and talked about fantasy: poetry, dreaming, faith, secularism, dada, the annunciation notebook. My friend, all the way here from Israel, my friend my friend it's a thrill to hear you think aloud again.

***

Why is my head not working??

***

--neither shadow of turning.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from
the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

--James 1:17

***

. . . . . . .

It begins. Houseful of students last night. Whole chicken in the pot with apple juice, garlic, onion, ginger, lots of cumin, and a couple of squeezed lemons. Debone, shred, and serve in stock topped with cilantro. Aside fat slices of avocado and queso fresco, saffron rice and black beans. That's what I did anyway. Now I don't feel like cleaning up the mess. But what a lovely bunch of seven newbies they are. And co-advisors Chris and Farah--Farah saying, "I'm going to teach you how to use that camera"--the real photographer in the room. And then Austin, Erin, and Ashley crashed the party and stayed after for a tarot reading. Seniors. Can't believe I lose them this year.

***

. . . . . .

For the record, sliding one's ass into place at the very tippy end? I'm talking deadline, here. Uncomfortably close. Other things, too, like, I don't want to wake up this tired anymore. Send me to bed, okay? Or send me a sleep mantra. I like my mantras with a little irony: what is present to me is what has a hold on my becoming. I like that word hold. It's either full stop or full throttle in the grip of present tense. Tense presence! Strangulation comes to mind, however.

***

What is present to me--

Bathtub epiphany: get dressed, take a walk, take hold. So few summer days left, and this is one of them. And the kiddos are coming to dinner. And we'll need ice and coke. There you go.

***

. . . . .

Faculty meeting at nine, advising orientation meeting, an application to send off, a trip to the bank, a Campus Diversity Committee to attempt to convene, and back to the grocery store because I've decided to cook for the seven new advisees arriving on Saturday. Why not? We can walk to my house from campus and I can feed them better and less expensively than Pizza House, which they will have plenty of over the next four years anyway. --But before any of this, I've got to get the place unpacked and put away. Gotta wash cleaning rags. A thick layer of fur and dust has settled over everything that didn't get touched all summer. Books and shelves, the shrine, spice jars in the kitchen, floors, rugs, furniture, curtains. It's too much for me to do alone without setting off a severe allergy reaction, so Amy is coming in with her Kirby. But she can't do much with heaps on heaps. I'm off to deal with heaps.

Oh, and not including the sad plants. The aloe falls out of its pot. I have no idea what's growing on the back porch. Something is.

***