Found in a previous notebook.

I found my gray notebook, tucked into a deep pocket of my camera bag. Notebooks are like little archeological digs. Some notes, you can reconstruct the circumstance, and thus pick up the thread. Other notes are just mysteries. Here's a (lightly) annotated page.

(mouseover the emblems for notes and links:)

      

When exactly do I have to go back to work?

This panic-inducing question seems to pop up in my head more frequently these days.  But panic is a sad way to spend your days.  Instead, I shall enumerate what I am doing with myself:

• finished a tome.
• started and finished a Dublin detective novel.
• reserved one more of the Dublin novels at my library; ordered used copies of the rest of them from Amazon, because hey, I have to go back to work soon, and I need to read those books. I don't have time for the library's robot to figure out that they're missing half a dozen Dublin detective novels! for my reading enjoyment!  Sometimes a girl's gotta take matters into her own hands.
• played around with Adobe Illustrator because it's fun.
• made a modest tiny little movie.
• played around with Garage Band.
• worked on an elegy.
• worked on another poem.
• wrote down some notes for another poem.
• Re-read "Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca":  

When you fly dressed as a peach tree,
when you laugh with a laugh of hurricaned rice,
when to sing you shake arteries and teeth,
throat and fingers,
I could die for how sweet you are,
I could die for the red lakes
where in the midst of autumn you live
with a fallen steed and a bloodied god,
I could die for the cemeteries
that pass like ash-gray rivers
with water and tombs,
at night, among drowned bells:
rivers as thick as wards
of sick soldiers, that suddenly grow
toward death in rivers with marble numbers
and rotted crowns, and funeral oils:
I could die to see you at night
watching the sunken crosses go by,
standing and weeping,
because before death's river you weep
forlornly, woundedly, [abandonadamente, heridamente,
you weep weeping, your eyes filled [lloras llorando, con los ojos llenos
with tears, with tears, with tears. [de lagrimas, de lagrimas, de lagrimas.

• re-read "Lycidas":

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. 
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew 
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melodious tear.

• had lunch with my friend
• saw Che (I know, you already know this, but it's my list, and it needs to be complete)
• saw Confessions of a Shopaholic with my daughter
• watched plenty of high-quality television
• read part of an article in CCC on holy cards/immaginette (isn't that a great word?)
• bought some yellow shoes
• contemplated these words from Frank Bidart:  "you cannot make me feel embarrassment at what I find beautiful"
• took Bruiser on several walks
• admired the stormy sky yesterday
• felt the wet, raw edge of spring in the air

The week's not over yet, my friends.  Tomorrow:  breakfast with my friend, a walk with another friend, an appointment with the historian, then movies! and vegetables with Chad! and visiting my grandson! and the Oscars over at my daughter's!  Moreover I have plans to consider the following:

• high culture--symphony, ballet, opera, theater--why do I resist?
• how does urge fit into everything else?
• pantoum--a poem about a movie, The Strangers
• the word "scry"
• flesh flesh flesh

I am psyched.