Today, I got up.

I get up every day, but today I got up with a plan. To be clear: most days I also get up with a plan. Today was Sunday. Sunday, I prefer to keep my plans a little loose. Today, my plan was tight, because my writing group was coming over, I had a lunch to prepare and a lunch, therefore, for which to shop. I had a poem to straighten out so it could fly right. Also, I have other writing to do and grading to do. Also, my environment, especially my study, is a little crazy. Okay, mostly my study. Also my side of the bed. Pretty much anywhere I am keeping my personal possession. So, as you can see, I really needed the plan.

Earlier this week, I had my instructional team over for our post-semester review, aka The Post-Mortem. I made some spinach lentil soup and a lovely salad. At the end of my preparations, as I was making the salad happen, I got in a little bit of a hurry and cut my finger. I cut my finger whilst preparing vegetables pretty often. Also, and in a perhaps not unrelated trend, I am often in a hurry whilst preparing vegetables, especially when people are coming over. The people: I should learn that hurrying and sharp knives are a bad mix. But I never do. There I am, slicing red onion super thin, because if you're putting raw onion into a salad, it needs to be super thin so all the sweet can be on the surface and the raw has to hide. That's a theory, anyway, a theory of how to slice an onion. Do you need more cooking theories? I've got loads. Slicing a red onion--right? that's where we were?--and then, a cut finger, which slows down your slicing considerably.

My hands have, ever since, been in motion and also a little bit on the raw side. It's cold, for one. A cut finger likes to take its time healing because hands are necessary. For work, you see. So this week, while I trimmed a billion anthologies on the big Duplo DocuCutter, and counted them a billion times in their boxes, in case I missed one, and hung up my clothes for the billionth time, and hung cold wet clothes on the rack, and made cookies, and decorated a Christmas tree, and picked five pears and two persimmons and a wedge of gorgonzola and four Christmas cactuses at Trader Joe's, and made scallion pancakes and squash laksa and a pear cranberry gingersnap crumble, my hands were on my mind.

In my practice, when I take a poem out to work on it, it means I open a virtual file and find the latest version of a digital document. If I'm lucky, I find I've left notes for myself on the poem, that will help me to remember where I left off, what I knew I hadn't yet done in the poem when I put it down.

I'm working on a poem called 'smart bomb,' set in a car while the speaker was driving to work and a story about the bombing in Syria was on the radio. This was a few months ago, after one of the cease-fires had yet again gone south. In the poem, the speaker turned the radio off, just as I often do, when an interviewer asks a muddle-headed question, or a caller's response is unbearable, or, as sometimes has happened in the past, the host has a cold and her voice sounds phlegmy. Sometimes, I just can't take the sound that the radio makes in my ears. In my mind. In my everything. I guess now is a good time to say that 'the speaker' in the sentences above is, for all intents and purposes, me.

I've been thinking about how information--ideas, events, cataclysms--detonate, how its blast ripples wide. I've been thinking about the what to do problem. About the what to feel. Also: about how much it feels like none of my answers are sufficient. Feeling isn't sufficient. Not even doing.

In my plans for the week upcoming, I have grading to finish. I have, perhaps, a few more meetings. A finite number, I hope I hope. I have more writing to finish. A lunch with a friend. Shopping for grandchildren. Two little grandsons who will just have driven in with their mom and dad from Arizona, coming over to say hi and bye really quick tomorrow night. I know I will get several reminders of daily political actions in the civic sphere, which is to say, in the world where we live: calls to make, emails to send, places to show up and lend my voice, however I feel. I have necessary sleep I must hold a place for. I hope for a day when I can stay in my quiet house and bake.

This last week, I bought some lights on an impulse at Target--dewdrop lights, they're called, little beads of light on copper wire that you can wind around things. In the dark, dark of winter, I do love a glow. The wire and lights came wrapped around a card. You had to unwind, then load three batteries into a little pack, then click a button. The first set of batteries made nothing happen, light-wise--I think I may have lodged one of the three batteries inexactly into its slot. So I patiently extracted the three, then tried another three batteries, and this time, they lit up, brightening at intervals along the wire.

I wrapped the wire around a vase of roses, which I also bought whilst shopping for my poetry lunch. The lights illuminated the glass urn, the stems crossed in the still water, the red and white blooming out the lip. I love roses at Christmas. Roses and lights. Roses, lights, and a tree. Roses, lights, baubles, and a tree. Roses, lights, baubles, quiet, and a tree. Unwinding and winding a string of light.

A turn in the weather.

It could certainly get hot again. In fact, I'd actually put money on the fact that it will, it will get hot again. But a decided cooling--by almost ten degrees, I think--makes such a noticeable difference that it feels like change, big change, the kind that signals something turning.

Last night, when we stepped out of my daughter's house in the evening, the sun hurtling toward the horizon as it does at the very most fiery end of the day, we all paused to notice the drama happening over there in the west. I thought about--and said--how beautiful the skies seem to get this time of year. The big billowy clouds. The sun rising and setting when we're getting up and getting home. Splashy, living for the moment. That's the light I'm talking about. The light is seizing the day.

Today, when I was driving from here to there, I noticed some new trees that had been recently planted on some high berm, marking the up-there freeway from its down-there offramp. They were perfectly oval, and cast lengthening oval shadows in a row. There wasn't time to look--I was getting off a freeway--but I felt some twinge that I couldn't see it properly. I wanted to fix it in my sight, in my memory. My imagined world.

I'm feeling the crush of not enough time. It's both a practical and an existential state. But I am loving what there's time to see, to do, to feel, right now while there's still lots of light and the really interesting shadows are getting ready to do their beginning and end of the day stretches. I hope to keep my eyes open.

Light.

(which is, I guess, a big theme with me.)

I didn't realize that we were springing forward today until, like, yesterday. The springing forward always feels like a kind of theft, because it's sleep, really, that's gone. One whole hour of it. 

A friend on FB said, "I just watched the clock go from 1:59 to 3:00, and I'm furious about it." Friend on FB, I feel you, I really really do. 

However. This morning, I got up, and it was a little before nine-ish. Not too shabby. And I made some oatmeal and read the paper and there was plenty of light outside. We took Bruiser for a slightly longer, slightly spring-y walk. All right, okay, things were going swimmingly.

I settled in to work for awhile. Worked away till it was lunchtime. Made some lunch, did some laundry. Worked a little while longer. Took a glorious, precisely mid-afternoon nap. Sun streamed in the window.

 Got up, worked a little longer. Finished the laundry. Decided on dinner. Meanwhile, the Jazz won their game against the Nets. There was broccoli romanesco and peppers and onion, roasted, and sliced yellow cherry tomatoes, to go on the noodles. And parmesan, finely and freshly grated. And it was still light outside. Still light.

 All of a sudden, after dinner walks with ever less heavy wrappings start to seem possible.

 Spring forward, you're all right.

Writing at midnight.

The Frost performs its secret ministry, 

Unhelped by any wind.

We've just come in from a dog walk in mist qua rain.

"Weird weather," I said.

Today has been weird weather--something about the sky and the imperceptibly greatening light, which, despite its infinitesimal increase, today felt dim and wet. I went out to get the paper with Bruiser. The walk and driveway looked wet but were in fact icy, which I discovered by slipping. Not falling, but clearly the whole situation was precarious from the get go. I went in and made myself some tea and read the Times.

Last night very late, my son came home from Sweden. I didn't hear him come in, but I did hear the dog hear him come in. He slept till noon. Yesterday, while he was laid over in some airport or another because of a missed connection, he said: "So what's for breakfast?"

I said, "I was thinking waffles."

"Waffles it is, then," he said. And I was true to my word.

My best friend made me these waffles when I visited her last summer, and they are in fact the best waffles I have ever eaten or made. At noon, or shortly thereafter, my son ate them while he was still emerging from his sleep. You know, that period where you're still assembling all the moving parts in your brain, not to mention your body? and you would really rather that no one is talking to you just now? even if you just came home from Sweden, and all that that implies?

After two or three attempts, we had a conversation or so. He brought me a marshmallow-y candy in the shape of a Santa. "Classic Swedish candy," he said. It was sweet and stretchy.

"How many hours of light were there?" the historian asked.

"Four or five?" my son said. "It was dark."

I think we're working on about eight around here, but the mist makes the light harder to interpret as light. I'm hoping the mist qua rain turns into rain qua rain, and the light becomes less ambiguous. Not to mention the air.

...whether the eave-drops fall 

Heard only in the trances of the blast, 

Or if the secret ministry of frost 

Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Notes for December.

Here are the things I want to do in December so far.

See a billion movies.

Bake and eat cookies.

Make delicious wintry dinners.

Eat pancakes.

Get a Christmas tree.

Read.

Nap.

Look at Christmas lights, the more colors and blow up figures and white-light-reindeer the better.

Go to Louisiana for college daughter's graduation!

Have piles of family fun with the folks around here, and those visiting.

Possibly take on an epic television program like (finally) Breaking Bad.

OR just watch a zillion episodes of Modern Family or so.

I would like to go for a wander downtown or around a neighborhood with my camera.

I would like to walk someplace where there is water.

This little listicle does not really comprise a story, it is desultory and generic. But I tell you, tonight while we were walking with Bruiser, we walked past a house that had a snowman with lights that changed colors, including all pink, and I thought: December, it is on. Bring me your everything: your evergreen, your wreath, your tangled strands with fizzly bulbs, your too much noise and crowds and excess of desire, your quiet and melancholy. Bring the darkest night. Bring your stars and bring the cold. Bring snow. I'm in the mood for a solstice and a nativity, for song and candles: let's sing and light them together.

Exhale.

It was great, and now it's done.  The Publication Boot Camp, that is. I left the building today and felt light light light.

This morning when I left the house, this is what I saw:

What a beautiful world.

Light.

we got up early-ish this morning.

I am loving the green but also the red of the leaves as they break through.

We lingered outside.

Light filtering down through the branches.

a white carpet springing up under the rosebushes.

couplet.

Today in pictures.

this is the test print. it worked.
we will have a chapbook.

Today began with struggle: to get up, to get motivated for the day, to fit in all the things that needed to happen in class. When you meet just one day a way, and you're in the thick of a project, sometimes your so-called "lesson plan" is as grass, in the Biblical sense, i.e., it is toast.

But then, sometimes good things come of the lesson plan
that came to naught. For instance, the layout works and the students talking to the printer make the transition from layout to document that will print the way it's supposed to. Which means that we have a go on our thick project, i.e., we have a chapbook.

"I triumphed over Adobe."

This is the person who made the layout work. She is a student and she has a bright future ahead of her.

The bright sun signifies that things
got a little hazy. You can see that, right?

Now, after that triumph, things get hazy. I know I ate a sandwich, and I know I went to a meeting, and then another meeting. I also know that I went to Tulie and had a cookie with an old friend, and then I drove downtown to have dinner with the historian. And then: a movie.

We saw Salmon Fishing on the Yemen. It was basically Big Miracle, but on the Yemen. With salmon instead of whales. Frankly, I loved it. Don't judge. Ewan MacGregor = good.

who knows what manner of false blossom? 

Also, it is spring. Which makes all of the above feel a little more blissful.

Here it is:

It's now fully mid-September. As we were pedaling around the 'hood on our bikes in the twilight, I said (and not a bit out of breath, in case you were wondering), "It's the autumnal equinox pretty soon, isn't it?"

"Yep, the 20th, isn't it?" the historian rejoined, in his knowledgeable way.

Right. And then the day will last, briefly, as long as the night; and then the nights will grow longer. So as of this moment, the people, I believe we can all agree that the light is a precious commodity, and we'd all best be making the most of it.

Today, in order to make the most of the light, I

• ate my little breakfast out on the porch and watched our raggedy cherry trees up against the blue and cloud.
• read my student drafts on the terrace outside the Student Center at work.
• took the aforementioned bike ride in the evening.

I hope to do more of the same and similar over the next few weeks, and so should you. Tomorrow, alas, I must arise at the crack of dawn for an early meeting. I will try not to focus on the crack portion of the morning, and instead, look up to see what's happening in the sky. Something good, I bet.

Cooking update: the quinoa salad was lovely today; yesterday, the ratatouille was resplendent. And we still have gorgeous tomatoes left, just lying around, not called for in any recipes, and therefore fair game for any rapacious tomato eaters. Of which there are at least a couple, lurking in the kitchen and environs.

Rue is the national herb of Lithuania, and other facts.

I meant to prune my grape vines, plant the seeds I bought late in the winter, clean out all my closets. Now that the harvest is in, the time is clearly ripe for regretting. Or not. I think: not. In mythology, even a basilisk, the breath of which could wilt plants and crack stones, could not destroy rue. Weasels bitten by basilisks could eat rue to recover and return to fight. Perhaps my tendency to regret is a talisman, but for now, I am trying not to let even a single thing in this autumn pass my notice. A couple of weeks ago, I washed the quilt that I will be using all winter, substantial, a little heavy, on our bed at night, to curl up in when doing the crossword, to wrap around me when I'm working here during the day. I am loving the light of autumn, of walking around the neighborhood with Bruiser and seeing, just seeing, the brilliance of everything--leaves tree bush flower stem berry--blazing and burning. It seems to me that the whole valley is, sometimes, glowing, not just with color but with an equinoctial slant to the light. What's the point of regret? Bruiser loves the colder air in the morning and at night. We take a bike ride around the neighborhood at dusk and it is all beautiful. All of it.

TAGS: comfort me with apples, harvest, grapes & roses

Bugs. Idaho bugs.

what is light? from lisab on Vimeo.

Note: the footage at the beginning of this video is taken from a film made by the Lumiere brothers in 1895. It is, as far as I can tell, in the public domain, and I credited it at the end of the film.

Merry Christmas to all.

No, but I would like to talk about my grandchildren.

That's the answer to the question, "Is your writing going well?" by the way.

But I digress! I am doing a swell job of

• reading.
  
• dog-walking.
• cooking with the vegetables God gave us.
• really enjoying the weather.
• giving a bottle to a tiny baby.
• getting smiles and kisses from the one-year-old grandson.
• did I mention reading?
• tracking every stupid bit of commentary about the election.
• obsessing about comments on Scotland daughter's blog about the election.
• thinking about the writing.

I had a dream that had fruit flies in it a couple of days ago. While, for the most part, fruit flies are almost always a negative, as in, Omg why are there so freaking many fruit flies? hanging around the peaches? Sweet Lord please save me from the fruit flies! In the dream, though--and I can't remember much of it--they were, I think, kind of beautiful. Kind of like these insects, catching the light over the Snake:



Maybe the flies in my dream were not so many or quite so busy, and definitely not as creepy (although I find this video also beautiful, but that's just me). But mind in motion, catching the light--not such bad metaphors for writing, actually.

Letter to summer.

Letter to summer

April 08

I am dreaming of you already, with your far fewer clothes
and longer light. I am driving already to Idaho
and the river where there will be fish I do not wish
to catch and in any case cannot. I am already in Seattle,
drinking iced tea and reading the too many books
I’ve brought piled upon the too many new ones
I’ve just bought. I am already sweating a little.
I am stepping outside at ten in the just-dark to hear
the little swell of crickets and perhaps to smell
the sweet phlox. I’m waking to a wet world,
to plants, to the cars and their surge on the highway.
I am filling my hands with herbs and leaves,
I am cutting flowers and leaving still more on the stem.
I am eating cherries from the tree because the birds
have spared them and I am up early to find the berry
under the leaf. I am in and out like the dog, like him
I want the sun and then I want to retreat
from it. I have already turned on the fan which whirs
over the bed. I’m sleeping with just a sheet.
I am writing to you, summer, to say, please save me
a space on your agenda. Do not overbook. Please plan
to take all afternoons off (also Fridays, and some Mondays).

Yours sincerely,

Things I like about my job (January edition).

1. Two weeks into the new semester I am still mostly caught up.
2. There are only two semesters in the year.
3. The second week means only about seven weeks till spring break and maybe just twelve or thirteen until it's all over.


4. And the students. Of course. Gosh! The students.