I know I shouldn't say it.

You know how everyone says you shouldn't complain about being busy, because by doing so, you just

1. imply that everyone else could not possibly be as busy as you are, and
2. also might start a war about who is, in point of fact, busier.

(me. obviously.)

But still: I am feeling frantic. I will not elaborate. I will just say, however, that in the next week, the following shall occur, with or without me, in my personal body, doing the events that the occurrences imply:

• write a poem a day, because (a) National Poetry Month, and (b) priorities.
• bind 400 chapbooks! with students!  (are you coming to this event? you totally should!)
• meet with an unknown amount of students, because who knows if they will sign up? even if I beg them?
• put in my travel forms GOSH
• work out loads of times, because (a) working out makes me feel better, thus (b) sanity, or what passes for it
• teach a Publication Center workshop because way back when we planned the schedule it seemed like a good idea to do this the week before the chapbook launch hell YES
• take just a few more things to Print Services, and beg them to print them immediately
• catch up on all the things that I left to their own devices while I gallivanted away to Houston and then to Cedar City on academic and literary jaunts, huzzah!
• teach the Publication Studies class, whatevs
• defend America, aka all the department curriculum proposals before the General Education Committee, good LORD
• go and pick up my Costco membership that has been waiting literally for months so I can
• buy refreshments for the event
• and other administrative issues too banal, frustrating, and so forth to elaborate BUT I COULD ELABORATE, HOLY HELL I COULD

Etcetera.

Not complaining though, not one bit.

I'm just going to say, though, that I have mostly been keeping up with Poem A Day for National Poetry Month (the cruelest month). And I'm gonna brag about it here.

(one)

(two)

(three)

(four)

(five)

(six)

(seven)

(eight)

(nine)

(ten)

(eleven)

(twelve)

In which I request a do-over.

Yesterday, a colleague stopped by the table where I was sitting in the Writing Center. "htms," she said, "I've just been meaning to ask you. Is there some work we're supposed to be doing on that XYZ committee?"

I didn't exactly jump out of my skin, but I did the super-tired inner version of that. (It was simultaneously super panicky and inert.) "ZOMG I need to call a meeting of the XYZ committee!" I said to her. And I wrote: "CALL MEETING OF XYZ CMTE" in my agenda.

This failure to have called a meeting of the XYZ committee brought to mind another committee I have not called a meeting of. I have been contemplating both of these committees and how I need to call a meeting of them, but to be honest with you, the people? I don't have time for either one of them.

Which leads me to how I would like to roll the calendar back. The question is, how far? back to the days of late August when the English Department had a retreat and we formed a bunch of new committees and I stuck my hand in the air? Or before that? Before I ever had a big idea, then said to my department, "Hey! How's about this big idea? What ho?" and we went ahead with the big idea but since it was, after all, my idea, I was in charge of it and therefore: the meeting-caller.


Well, you may not be aware of this, but this isn't Back to the Future and I don't have a DeLorean anyway, and neither do you, the people (do you? if you do, we need to talk.). So I'm stuck with my over-committed present. Either that, or maybe I will have a nervous breakdown? But then, I always think that at about week seven or so of the semester, especially spring semester, where the downhill slide inherent in the second semester also means that stuff I started in August is as we speak cascading in a landslide-ish fashion toward me, which means I better keep running or else.

Dear broken day,

--by which I do not mean "bad day" or "day in which things went irretrievably wrong," although it's certainly possible that bad days are also broken days. Broken day, you are one with so many separate elements that you break into pieces which do not knit together. The effect of a broken day is disparate, fragmentary, without a river flowing through it. When seen from afar, a broken day has many edges that do not connect. When seen from close up, a broken day is marked with deep rifts into which one might accidentally step and wrench an ankle.

Broken day, in my agenda you look like this:

(but in reverse.)

You are an archipelago and not a land mass. Perhaps there is a bridge connecting the islands, but it is often treacherous in bad weather.

Dear broken day, I know that life often organizes itself into units of you--it is how the work gets done. I used to do better at salvaging radiant scraps of time from a day like that. This morning, for instance, I sat out in the chill as the sun stretched across the quad for a few minutes, cold and warm and quiet. But even when I have an unbroken morning, the specter of an afternoon all in pieces, obligations and appointments and enterprises, looms and infects.

I should probably make a calendar with entries like "wait for horses to appear in the back field" and "watch for the ornamental fruit to turn golden" or "lie still in the grass" or even "don't get up just yet."

One thing: I have gathered myself at the end of a day in pieces by walking. Today, I got home and pulled on my walking clothes and plugged in my headphones and walked till I felt just a little dizzy. Dizzy but restored. Broken day, would I have felt that restoration so keenly but for you?

htms

Saturday, or Do the collapse.

Today:

1. go to market (peas, cherries, chard, lettuce, garlic, little squashes, apricots, and the good bread from the Crumb Bros.)
2. visit the historian's son, wife, and darling new baby (via some circuitous route because of the I-80 madness)
3. buy a Coke/potato chips on the way home
4. lunch/nap
5. paint the basement (goodbye paneling, hello Saffron Cream)
6. shower (quick quick quick)
7. drive to airport--college daughter! rejoice!
8. see The Incredible Hulk (could there be a scrawnier Bill Banner to start off with? not as lame as I thought it would be)
9. eat at Wendy's and philosophize with college daughter, singing son and his wife
10. go home and philosophize with college daughter, singing son, his wife, and the historian. Not to mention Bruiser.
11. run up to makeup artist daughter's house for a quick visit with her, college daughter, and the darling grandson who can walk and say "Ball!".
12. collapse into bed (after this post).

That's two collapses, in case you're counting. Tomorrow, some of us are heading up to Idaho to collapse some more, but in the best possible sense of that word.