Short letters.

Dear Monday,

There was a moment when you were blank with promise. Then a meeting request. And another meeting request, and another. Suddenly, your middle was all full of meetings, and you were thus like any other day.

What was there to do, but succumb to that meeting-ful middle and therefore not do anything else worth mentioning?

Slothfully,

htms

______________

Dear Submissions,

I have just blown you a kiss and sent you off. In this metaphor, you are on a swift-moving boat, wending your manuscript-y way to wherever manuscripts go--hell? an alien land? another planet?--whence editors will hail me from afar in a few months. "Hey!" they'll say. "Hey you! Poet!"

I will cup my hand to my ear so that I can hear them a little better.

"Someone else besides you won the competition! But we value your manuscript highly! Unfortunately we can't publish all the good work we receive!"



I guess it's not really a metaphor, but

Good luck,

htms

_________________

Dear York,

As I understand it, you have a medieval wall. Parts of the wall are Roman, even. And there's a killer minster. And other stuff massively historical, dating back to William the Conqueror and the Vikings.

In the larger region--although I admit, I have little sense of what is "a great way off" or "quite close" or "not likely, not in the same day!"--there is the Yorkshire Dales National Park, where there are dales, apparently, which I am still trying to understand the nature of. There's also the North York Moors National Park, where there are moors, and also historic trains, ruined abbeys, etc.

I like just saying these words: "medieval wall." "minster." "dales." "moors." "ruined abbeys."

York, I want to see you so much it hurts. Even though, as my daughter points out, for people who actually live among them, one ruined abbey or medieval wall is the same as another. I know that you will not disappoint me, because I'm just like that. A medieval wall makes me unreasonably happy. I will take a thousand pictures of you, York and environs.

I hope you are as exciting to my traveling companions. And perhaps that you have an excellent candy shop or bakery or both, to soothe anyone who finds medieval walls and ruined abbeys a little bit of a cliche.

Fervently,

htms

Short letters.

Dear hard chairs,

Today, you were ubiquitous during the meeting after meeting after meeting I attended. You did not make my life any easier.

Sincerely,

htms

*

Dear cafeteria lunch,

I basically swore you off at the end of last year. 2012 was going to be the healthy, bring it from home food year. Yet there you were, with your BLT hack, your barbecue potato chips and Dr. Pepper. I resent you for reminding me how very weak I am.

I will not be eating you again anytime soon,

htms

*

Dear all-day tall boots,

You are too cute for words, and while I was wearing you, you made me feel a little bit like a goddess. However, you wore out your welcome by 3 p.m., it must be said. Perhaps you are more like 5 and a half hour tall boots.

I will make a note of it,

htms

*

Dear motivational speaker,

I wanted to do grievous harm to your PowerPoint slides and especially to how you said "bing!" when you wanted the next slide to come up. Seriously?

Never darken my door again,

htms

Essais.

For the past several weeks, my work e-mail has been warning me that I am approaching a limit. True to my character, I waited until I was over the limit and therefore prevented from receiving and sending e-mail. Then, I deleted just until I was let back in the sending/receiving fold. A few days later--sometimes just a few hours later--I was back on the warning list.

Yesterday evening, I spent a good hour deleting e-mail. I had cause to reflect upon ephemera: the little notes we send each other, the small witticisms, the evidence of a friendship. Farewell, little notes. Adieu, small witticism. Evidences of my friendships, go with God.

s

Yesterday, a text book editor stopped by the Writing Center. He had some leftover sandwiches from a meeting and offered one. Packaged with the sandwiches were cake doughnuts.

I fell on the sandwich as did the Assyrian, who came down like a wolf on the fold. The doughnut I left in its paper sleeve, tucked into my bag, for who knew when I might need it?

Today. That's when I needed that doughnut, whilst reading drafts. It was delicious.

s

I am reading drafts. Not online: actual drafts, printed on paper. The students who forgot their hard copies in class, who sent them to me via e-mail? I printed them out. Die, trees! Reading drafts in hard copy, writing in the margins, is so choice. Should you have the means to do so, I highly recommend it.

Short lists: a short list.

Slightly alarming things that have happened more than once and I am hoping will not become a trend:

1. Missing my stop on the train because I am reading.

Thing I do that might be a little weird, but I'm probably going to keep doing it anyway:

1. Skulk around my own house, faking like I'm not at home, when someone's at the door and I don't feel like answering it.

Possibly not the best right-before-bedtime reading material:

1. Dark brooding crime fiction set in European countries near the Arctic circle. (But I'm probably going to keep reading it anyway.)

Things which, under some circumstances, might be delightful, but which, under these particular circumstances, in fact make me a little bitter:

1. Receiving my complimentary copy of a book of poems--the one that won the contest that I also entered but did not win.