The chill and its recompense.

I realized that I had a midday meeting downtown when I was still lying in bed.

[I realize that it's a little early in the post for a digression, but:]

DIGRESSION: It is not a good habit to be checking one's phone before one has arisen from one's bed. I keep reading this. It's like, basically, inviting the Stress Fairy in for a snuggle. And yet I do. I do invite the Stress Fairy, aka my iPhone, into bed with me. It's terrible.

END of DIGRESSION.

Ugh. The meeting, I mean. Well, more the downtown-ness of the meeting, i.e., getting out of one's snuggery, aka, one's very own home where one was peaceably grading, and getting into the car and listening to the wind howling and driving when there's snow, &c &c it's the antithesis of the at-home-work-day I had planned in my mind before I checked my phone and saw that sneak attack of a meeting. Which was just fine, once I got there. Then there was the driving home. Midday meeting downtown, you'd be just fine except for the driving sandwich.

Even so, once I got home again, I had the presence of mind to put two cups of dried beans in water to boil then soak. I have like ten different kinds of legumes at my house. I don't know, precisely, what possesses me. These were Christmas beans, enormous and a lovely mottled color. I also have flageolets and black lentils and green lentils and garbanzos and some sort of black bean and cranberry beans and I think still some yellow Navajo beans? I don't know.

Well, if a cold day isn't a day for soup, I don't know what. So I graded some more, then worked out, then made chili.

I don't have an oven yet, so there was no cornbread, but there was toast, and there was whole milk yogurt and grated sharp Cheddar and cilantro to go with the chili, and dang if that wasn't the most fitting dinner ever for a mid-November day. Plus leftovers, which is but one of the saving graces of at-home-work-day, even with the interloping midday downtown meeting.

I cannot wait for that oven. Oh the baked goods that will issue therefrom!

The hours.

1. Crushed cardamom seed and star anise, a cube of raw sugar, a drop, two drops, of vanilla. Hot milk.

2. Dress, or half dress, for the first half of the day. Draw the duvet up to the very chin of the pillows. Hang up yesterday's skirt. Assemble the tasks, and turn away from them.

3. Rinse the cup. Estimate how long it will be before the Christmas roses are beyond beauty.

4. The hour of the first task and the hour of the second task.

5. Hunger means it's time to go to the gym.

6. The flat screens are filled with judges and shamans and rednecks and Friends, all of whom seem to be wearing too much bronzer. Joey and Rachel are having their fling, the briefest of all the Friends' flings. It is a tender pathos, for their love will not last. It drifts from that screen hoisted up on high to me, on the back row of the treadmills.

7. The window open for the two o'clock drive home.

8. The speech therapist and the historian, discussing his voice.

9. At the store, I remembered to buy fennel fronds, peppers red yellow orange, Triscuit, a baguette, and I found, serendipitously, ground red chocolate. Even so, I forgot the honey.

10. Task three.

11. The trimming and peeling of the vegetables.

12. Olive oil, mushrooms, peppers, onions, basil, parsley. The leftover sauce from last week. Linguine. Grated parmesan.

13. Tasks four and five. In another room, the Jazz blitz the Bulls.

14. Grinding away at the last, a delicate instructional task. I snap screen grabs and drag them into a frame, fuss and fiddle with them till they are right, or right-ish. Is this what I meant when I said "game-ify this learning activity"? My wrists hurt and my confidence in this particular performance is thin.

15. Dog dithering and dalliance around whatever odors present themselves in the guise of crusted snow and frosty grass.

16. And this, these sentences, the last of the day.

The dark.

Darlings! I am officially at that moment of the year when it is 6:43 p.m. and I feel like, what, is it bedtime yet? So dark. Also: cold. And I feel a tad sniffly, like maybe there's a cold about to happen, because my sleep, she is all mixed up.

But never mind. Today, I added yet another item to my permanent collection of long cardigans (cozy division), and have spent time burrowing into the cinematic (not really) archives of my screencasts, only to come to the inescapable conclusion that

• although the screencaster seeks to make a durable instructional artifact,
• time and tide do transform the landscape of, well, everything, and lo the screencasts of yesteryear do in the cold light(-ish) of day seem veritably old-timey and unbearably dated, and thus
• the screencaster feels called to make a new one. Yes,
• a new screencast, on an old topic, but with new examples and less static slides.

Therefore:

• woe.

But never mind. Today for lunch I made a sandwich on a pretzel roll which, whoa, they are good. What was on my sandwich, you ask? Well! 

• since we're working in bullet points, it was
• melted gruyere and
• avocado and
• lots of little cut-up cherry tomatoes and
• Maldon salt (infinitely better than regular salt, I swear it!), and
• pepper, obvs, and
• arugula.

I made it

• open-faced

so that I could prolong the pleasure. And lo it was very good.

Also, I made a new screencast, and captioned it. And I made a

• list of the other tasks I have to do,
• none of which I have actually "accomplished."

So: good day.

Recently, my friend Ann, whose writing I have been reading for more than 30 years, true story!, asked me to answer these questions, called The Blog Tour. (you can read her answers here.)

1. What are you working on right now?

Right now, I'm revising a manuscript of poems. I'm writing new poems from time to time as well.

2. How does it differ form other works in its genre?

Hey, Blog Tour questions, when I read this question yesterday, it sent me into an existential crisis! How the hell should I know how it differs from other works in the genre? I can barely wrap my mind around these two facts:

• (a) I am a poet. And
• (2) WHY.

Welllll, it's a manuscript of poems. It still has some religion in it, which maybe is out of style these days? Or not. It is lyric. It feels urgent to me, and also late (maybe this is because I am getting older?). But in that it is lyric and deals with the usual lyric questions (beauty, joy/melancholy, death and loss, the persistence of song), I guess it is kind of of a piece with lyric poetry, that ancient art.

3. Why do you write what you do?

My answer to this may sound flippant, but it's true: because I can. Because I can, I do.

4. How does your writing process work?

I am currently not in much of a writing groove. But when I am, I more or less regularly write stuff down that I mentally tag "poem-ish" or "possibly poem-ish" or "smells like teen poetry." I have a document called "Daily Writing" that I write in semi-annually, which is where I record the poem-ish material. Sometimes--lucky times--a poem will come to me almost whole, or at least the whole gesture, or nearly the whole gesture. In that case I write it down, if I'm smart. I'm not always smart.

If I don't get the whole poem or the whole gesture, then periodically I go back through my notes and see what seems interesting. Sometimes, I take the interesting bits and create a new document to see if I can make something happen. Sometimes the "Daily Writing" document will give me an idea and I let that idea stew for a while, and then I see if I can make something out of that stewing.

I remember reading Stanley Kunitz, who said that when he was young he wrote all the time; as he got older, poems came to him less frequently. Philip Levine said that John Berryman told him, "When you are young, write everything that occurs to you." I did that, when I was younger. Right now, not so much is happening. But it will. I actually, now, kind of have faith in poetry. Right now, I am revising and shaping that manuscript. That is part of my process as well.

I am supposed to tag some of you, so watch out! I WILL TAG YOU.

Thursday morning update.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love working at home? Uninterrupted quiet. Looking out my window, where I can see the Chevy parked at the curb, trees upon trees upon trees with their bare gray limbs, birds alighting and taking off, a bed of tulips in the across-the-street neighbor's south-facing lawn, our lawn thinking about becoming a meadow. I can get up to pour myself another cup of tea from the pot I've made. The dogs asleep on the couch. At the other end of the house, I'm washing the sheets. It's pretty much heaven.

So, as of Thursday morning, I have accomplished:

• the viewing of three movies with college daughter (Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabithia, and Breach--that last I'd already seen, but it was pretty good the second time--I like stories about spies, as I knew something about it as I was growing up, and also one of my high school acquaintances was the sister of Christopher Boyce, who was either the Falcon or the Snowman, I can't remember which).
• I have drafted, with counterintuitive, a proposal for a chapter in a book about multimodal composition.
• I have responded to a bunch of student writing (still have more to go, but that's okay! I'm up for it!).
• Have watched (or listened to the historian and running son watch) two abysmal performances by the Utah Jazz.
• Have gone to the dog park twice.
• Have cooked dinner several times.
• Despite having plenty to do, have managed to keep panic and stress at bay.

All to the good. Basically, spring break is doing its job.

Some more things I will do before this week ends:

1. go to a poetry reading tonight (Andrea Hollander Budy at Westminster)
2. see a church basketball game--region championships!
3. have breakfast, etc. with college daughter and college niece
4. write a little every day
5. do some more reading of student work
6. make dinner some more times
7. help host running son's Court of Honor (the completion of the Eagle Scout story, oy!)
8. see several more movies with college daughter and the historian

There was a moment at the beginning of the week when I thought the week would be too busy to be restorative. But it turns out I was wrong.