Porous.

A year ago or so, a woman I didn't know wrote to me to ask if I would be interested and willing to be the poet in a summer camp in a school district a couple of counties south of here. The Poet? "Sure!" I said.

There were a bunch of things I did not factor in to that "Sure!" To wit:

• other, bigger grant I was also nominally a person of interest in/on/wherein/what have you. We hadn't yet been awarded this grant, but still.
• there was big life-altering medical stuff happening in my family.
• I had a book coming out--whatever that means.

The key here is, I didn't factor that stuff in. I just said yes. 

I'm sure you're ahead of me here, but a few weeks ago, I heard back from the woman. They got the grant. Was I, perchance, still available? 

Here's the part where I talk about my conception of time:

Time is infinitely subdividable into increments which can contain, potentially and approximately, three times the amount of stuff you think you can get done, and actually, twice the amount of stuff you can get done, if you don't mind a little bit of sloppiness and stress-induced forgetfulness and if sleep doesn't actually matter to you whatsoever.

I realize that this sounds like I'm saying that, through application of this theory of time, I get twice as much done as other people. But what I'm actually saying is, the sloppiness, forgetfulness, and sleep-deprivation you see me exhibit is the side-effect of a conception of time that is, quite frankly, inadvisable. 

Flash forward to this week, when I drove to points south each day, Monday through Thursday, for a morning with young people--first through twelfth graders--to write poetry. I said to one of my colleagues, "I've had the drive south and back again every day this week to consider my sins." We laughed, ha ha ha, because clearly what I meant was, don't ever do that again, LISA. But if that's the lesson that life was dealing out to me, via a lengthy drive forth and back each day, pray tell why I found myself feeling bereft today, when I realized I would not be working with these kids again? 

Today, everything went pretty well. The little girl, probably a first grader, who wanted nothing to do with poetry writing, was happy to dictate to me, so I could transcribe, an acrostic based on her own name.

"What's an H word?" I asked. "Huh huh huh?"

"Honey!" she said, while playing with three rather hazardous looking unbent paper clips, which she was imagining as characters.

"I have two names, Josh and Joshua," another little one told me.

"Which name do you like better?" I asked him.

"Josh," he said, with a tiny smile.

Before the various rotations of the summer camp started today, I arrived to see a part of circle time. This camp is located in a community with strong Native heritage, so upon arrival, the kids all took part in hoop dancing, or grass dancing, or fancy dancing, or jingle dancing. The littlest ones were the happiest to explain these various dances to me, showing me a little bit of their footwork and the positions in which they held their arms.

"You also keep nodding your head," one boy told another boy, who was showing me how you tapped your feet for the grass dance. They all nodded their heads.

Today, the woman in charge was showing the children how to put up a girl's hair in a traditional Navajo bun. One girl knelt while another girl and a boy helped the woman bind the hair with a tie, then secure it. The woman explained that putting the hair up was a way of showing respect for traditional ceremonies, such as dances, and that different tribes might have different traditions, for both men and women. I watched as the bigger kids paid attention, their little brothers and sisters sitting on them, or near them. 

I was watching--lucky enough to take part, even--in the intimate work of binding together a community.

The woman, when she first asked me to be a part of the summer camp, had told me that the curriculum had a strong Native American emphasis. But clearly, I didn't have any idea, really, what this meant, and for whom. And only by being there, by figuring out how to engage these kids in processes of writing, could I begin to understand. That, of course, is why I felt so bereft when I left today.

I told my colleagues about all this unexpected emotion at the meeting to which I raced after leaving the summer camp poets behind. It was, of course, a meeting for the bigger grant, which kicks into motion in T minus nine days. 

"One of the little boys [it was Josh, with the little smile] saw me in the gym as I was leaving. He had a little cookie in his hand. He said, 'I guess I'll see you tomorrow.' But he won't see me tomorrow." 

And then I cried into a Del Taco napkin, because even when time is infinitely subdividable, you still need lunch. 

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said from behind the napkin.

My friend and colleague said, "Well, sometimes you just have to cry." She has said this to me before, and she's right. Otherwise, you just try hard not to feel things. And in the end, I'd rather feel things, to say yes, and to make sure that I show up at the powwow at the end of the month--"bring a lawn chair and a sun umbrella!" says the woman in charge--so I can see the kids' fancy dancing, help showcase their writing, and remember their names.

Hey, 'sup.

I got a note from Ann the other day:

To which I replied:

Just like that.

It feels like it's been a hard year, maybe for a bunch of us. In no particular order:

• the hideous, soul-scarring election
• my own heightened awareness of race and policing and all manner of injustice
• shouldn't I have known this more piercingly all along?
• why didn't I know it all along? why didn't I let myself know it?
• busier than ever
• the historian has retired--which is awesome! but it has thrown me for a loop.
• my loop, being thrown ( < metaphor)
• an illness during the spring and summer for the historian
• my workplace is now absent the historian, except in memory

and so on.

That list of bullets is, more or less, why I've not been writing. As I considered the things I might write about, the weight of everything seemed so thoroughly to counterbalance it that 'what-I-might-write-about' seemed like feathers. Like piffle. Like lighter than lightweight. I felt terrible for even thinking about writing about, say, pie, or pancakes, or whining in my usual recreational way. 

I read this, while preparing for Danez Smith's visit to our college this past September:

I came to talk to you, my partners in verse who build a life’s work documenting their brief time on this earth. I come you to asking to question the landscape of our pastoral muse. I ask you to question what makes you safe? What frees you to write odes of the low country of America, to mention the trees and not their wicked history, to write the praise song of night, but not sing of what dark bodies hide cold in daylight? My family, and I pray we can call each other family, I am asking you to do what you do best: Write.

Writing in these dark times feels necessary and also harder: recognizing that writing is always risking not getting it right, and if you only do the thing you already know how to do, you aren't risking enough, you aren't willing yourself to learn. 'Odes of the low country of America'? That's me, folks. Having conceded that, then, what would I write?

I've written a lot in the past year, most of which I've shared only in the smallest of circles. But I haven't written here. Each time in the past few months that I've approached writing here, I've felt sad and wrong, and I've stopped myself. But I've been thinking that I want to break that sad/wrong circuit. Recently, I also read this, by Matthew Zapruder, "Poetry and Poets in a Time of Crisis":

Poets, if you find yourselves worrying that your poems are not “about” political matters, here is my suggestion: every single time you feel that worry, finish your poem, make it as beautiful as you can, and then do some kind of concrete action. Support threatened communities, or the environment. Pledge yourself to participating in a voter registration drive. Give money to a political organization working tirelessly for change. If you do this, the world will benefit in two ways: from your activism, and from the beautiful poem you have made. 

Regardless of how poets feel about aesthetic matters, we all agree we are citizens. We have the same obligations to activism and engagement as anyone else. Some poets I know have been working very hard in these ways for a long time. Others of us have been mostly asleep. One of the only good things I can say about this undeniable crisis is that it has made absolutely clear what some have never forgotten: that we all need to wake up and start putting our queer shoulders to the wheel (Ginsberg, “America”). Whatever kind of poetry anyone writes, or whatever art we make, there is always time to do the necessary work of making our society better.

It's not like one of these poets, both of whom I admire so much, is right and the other is wrong. It's that I want to write, I want to risk more, I want to try to get it right and have the courage to face that I might very well get it wrong, and still keep trying. I want to hear and respond to the call to speak to my times. I want to make beautiful things with words. I want to write.

So, to you, anyone who might still want words from me: Okay, I will.

Day the first: an orientation.

It begins, the beginning of the academic year, in the middle of a week which already feels long. To wit:

• Sunday, when we drove home from Idaho. Does this count? Didn't we go to Idaho for the fun of it? Does driving home on a Sunday count, legitimately, as a part of a long week? I'm not saying I'm being a grownup about it, okay? I'm saying that driving home from a vacation, just like flying home across the Atlantic and practically a whole continent after spending a blissful nine days in Scotland, is the worst, and it categorically inaugurates everything that comes after it as 'long.' 
• Whew, so much whining after a vacation!
• Monday: meeting meeting meeting. Meeting! Even with friends: meeting x 4 = math, which is the worst.
• Tuesday: MEE E E E e e e ting. So much meeting.
• Wednesday: the first day. After which come Thursday and Friday, with their iffy qualities and also: more meetings.

allow me to illustrate.

Well, just so you know that my whining game is legit. Because it is LEGIT.

I had a good writing summer. June and July, I wrote a poem or revised a poem every day. Adding that to the poems I wrote in April (the cruelest month), I have about 90 poems happening. Add to that: my current manuscript was a finalist twice and a semifinalist once in national book competitions. And now summer is over, and said manuscript is done being a finalist, which, no matter how many pep talks you give yourself, or how many times you remind yourself of encouraging things that your writer friends have said, you have to pick yourself up from it, frankly. It feels a little bit like failure.

This helps.  To wit:

And indeed, when I came to the U.S. to become a poet, and when my first book was rejected by the first three publishers I sent it to – FC2, Coffee House, and Wesleyan University Press, as I recall – I was undaunted.  And when my third book took nine years, over 20 revisions and 4 cycles of rejections before it came out, I never thought that this was wrong. It’s not that I thought that my writing was so great and that all I needed was to keep putting it out there until I’d reach the occult threshold of the 76th attempt, but rather, that I came to believe in duration. How a narrative becomes itself in time. How cycles of dormancy and expression are weirdly nutritive. How failure itself becomes a site of possibility: an aperture for chance; for the conditions of the work to arrive in a different time to the one in which it was begun. I learned to continue, to keep moving forward, to keep writing, whether the outcome of that writing was visible – perceptible – or not. I learned how to re-write my work with as much passion and joy and curiosity as I had given to the writing of it. I even invented a chant: Re-writing is writing. Writing is re-writing.

Yep: "cycles of dormancy and expression are weirdly nutritive....failure itself becomes a site of possibility: an aperture for chance; for the conditions of the work to arrive in a different time to the one in which it was begun."

I hope you noticed that I linked to Bhanu Kapi's commencement address. I block-quoted from it. And then I quoted from the block quote. I'm trying to reorient myself. Not a bad thing for a person to do at the beginning of the semester.

In other news, there are practically no vegetables in my house. Not to mention not much of anything else, what with all our travel travel travel (and the subsequent meeting meeting meeting). So once I conclude this orientation session--orienting you to my new semester, since no students showed up for this actual orientation session IRL--I am going to work out, and then buy some broccoli.

It's going to be great. Everything--the writing, the nutritive failure, the semester, the workout, the broccoli. Maybe especially the broccoli though, which is itself super-nutritive.

The filth and the fury.

Two days in revisionville. by lisa
{click to enlarge}

The difference ten hours of sleep makes.

Yesterday, three days out from our epic and transatlantic journey back from Scotland, I found myself frayed to my very last nerve, so much so that the thought of going to see a movie made my head feel like bees were flying around it in an excessively closeup way. Also, the curry I ordered at medium heat felt way tooooooo spicy, as did the papaya salad. And I resented pretty much everything about my day. I actually found myself holding my head and davening in a meeting (on Saturday!) of our instructional team.

I also had this giant crushing papier-mache boulder hanging over my head by a very thin thread: the poem I promised to write for convocation, which is this coming Tuesday.

Have I known I need to write the poem all summer. Well, yes. Most of the summer, anyway. And did I start writing the poem back when I first heard about it? Kind of. Did I work on the poem on the flight back from Scotland? Sure I did.

And nonetheless, was I attempting the come-to-Jesus writing of the poem during the epicenter of the jet lag?

YES, okay? YES.

Anyway, I told my Scotland daughter about the crushing papier mache burden of poem I was fending off. From crushing me. This was after the davening and the head holding had already happened, but before the insult of the spicy curry and the head full of bees feeling. Here was our conversation:

What a sensible daughter! First of all, the suggestion to write a haiku, which: why didn't I *think* about/do that? And then the suggestion to find a poem I already had written! Why didn't I think about/do THAT?

Well, in fact, I did neither of these things. What I did was eat and whine about the curry, then come home and work on the poem.

At precisely nine o'clock, I took stock of the poem. It had two quatrains and many many many many single lines, aka 'notes.' I said (not aloud) SCREW THIS, walked into the bedroom and got under my faux fur blanket. And fell asleep until 10:45 p.m.

The historian took one look at me and said, 'Maybe I'll just take Bruiser for his walk and you can stay here.' I'm pretty sure I thanked him before I fell asleep again until seven a.m.

TEN HOURS.

I woke up, looked at the clock, gave it a kiss (in my mind), and was practically whistling when I walked back to my laptop and wrote that poem like a boss. The End. Sleep is the answer to everything.

The reminder.

Writing is hard. That's first.

The whole "everything you do is writing" notion notwithstanding, which I respect and honor, the actual sitting down to make a draft: hard.

Writing that draft can make you feel stupid. Stupid and stupider. Over and over again, for your whole life.

(Why do I do this, again?)

Yesterday, I finally plunged in, with all the brave bravery in my quiver of braveness, to wring a poem out of some notes that, truth be told, had been sitting around on their lazy, complacent asses all summer. "Notes," I said, "I will make a draft out of you or know the reason why!"

The notes did not even bestir themselves to look attentive. They were all, big talk for a person who hasn't written a poem in weeks. And they had a point, but I would not stand for that insolence. No! that insolence would not stand!

I disentangled a note, one with a small turn-of-phrase-of-possibility, from its slothful compatriots. I reorganized its syllables. I broke it in two, the better to form lines out of it. There, I said. A beginning.
Then did the same with another note. I discerned a form in the offing. Encouraged, I went with it: I constructed a whole draft out of two mangled notes and a nascent form.

Horrible.

I went to bed on the draft with this thought: I could reorganize the two settings and sort this from that, I could make it into longer stanzas instead of couplets. I thought, I'll work on it in the morning.

So I did. I checked out the entire internets and ate my breakfast (did I neglect to mention that I made a splendid dinner and cherry clafoutis last night? this is one of the side benefits of writing horrible drafts: inspiring dinners, with leftover cherry clafoutis for breakfast!). I re-investigated the entire internets to see if I might have missed something important. I forwarded a New York Times article to the historian and my oldest friend. Then I trailed, all summer and smoke--no, seriously, those fires to the east and the west are making my throat hurt and my eyes water--into my study, sat down in my big chair, and opened my draft.

I had to consider that my draft might, at this point, have the upper hand. What with its form and all. And its sheer presence.

But I opened another document, and started to sort this from that, to reorganize the two settings, to make longer stanzas.

And now I have a new draft.

So that's the second part: even a horrible first draft, wrested from indolent notes and bad formal experiments, can turn into a better second draft, as long as you're willing to let smoke, summer, weird dreams, roasted garlic and broccoli pasta with pecorino, cherry clafoutis, the entire internets, and your own sense of control (have you lost the header of this clause? Me too!)--as long as you're willing to let all of the above intervene.

Writing lesson out.

Reset.

Every so often, I find myself in a moment where what I'm experiencing on the one hand, and the words I have on the other, are entirely incommensurate. That is, the words won't do, or the words I can find, or am willing to summon. Visiting and then leaving my daughter and her family, and going up to Idaho with another bunch of children and grandchildren, and my son and his family who are leaving soon to live in Arizona while he does graduate work. I promised myself I would live these experiences and be present for them, and I believe I have, and am.

Interestingly, while we were in Scotland I took a deliberate internet fast, for four days while we were on the road to York and back. And up in Idaho, the wireless situation at the cabin was ruinous. Which is to say for most of another four days, I was for the most part offline.

It's helpful to see, I suppose, that I don't have to be online. But it also means there's an interruption in the words--here and elsewhere--and then, when the means present themselves again, the words seem farther away, and more difficult, and entirely less adequate. I also have the sense that I almost don't want to write--that writing whatever this is would, in some sense, end it more thoroughly. And I still want to have it. I want to have all the experience, the joy and the ordinary happiness and the sadness, too, because while I have it I'm still in it, and when it's over, well, it will be over.

My daughter wrote about what seems to be a similar dilemma yesterday on her blog. She decided to post ten pictures to emblematize what was wonderful about the two weeks we spent in Scotland, and I have decided to do the same--a handful of images of what's been going on for the last month, and a few words about them.

Some of the pictures I've posted before, from Scotland, in one forum or another. Here's one from Alnwick Gardens, at the top of a huge cascading fountain. We spent a wonderful day in these gardens, which were in pretty close to a perfect state because of a long cold spring. These people are among the great beauties of that day.

 

This was one of the best parts of being in Scotland--the every day business, making breakfast and hanging out the wash, feeling the joy of a sunny morning and the promise, perhaps, of a sunny day altogether. We ate breakfast in the garden that morning--waffles, made on a brand new waffle iron. Can you see the children playing on the trampoline in the background?

  

The night before we left, we had planned to have an unbirthday party, since we are almost never together on birthdays. The girls took over the party planning, so it turned into a more straightforward farewell. They constructed a list of activities, which included a "Neatest Drawing" contest, a game of Pirates, Musical Bumps and Musical Statues, Hide (and find) the Book, Bite the Donut, and enough other games and contests that it would have taken days to properly execute them. So we did the best we could. They decorated and assembled prizes. A wonderful time was had by all. (Although the historian did his best, he did not win the Bite the Donut game, in case you're wondering--Raymond, my daughter's husband, who is a champion of many things, won the prize.)

  

In between the Scotland trip and the trip to Idaho, I visited my friend in Sonoma County. In a whirlwind trip, we talked about everything, ate beautiful food, saw the ruins of Jack London's Wolf House, ate some more beautiful food, talked about some more stuff, saw some movies, got me started on The Killing (which is killing me), and bought some stuff. In other news, I wore a dragon necklace that was a hit with the entire city of San Francisco that day.

 I drove with Deacon and Will to Idaho. This is a tradition, I think, since we have done it three years running. The last two years, my daughter who lives in Louisiana was my companion. We all missed her this year, since she needed to stay and work this summer. This year, my youngest son drove with me. I loved the conversations and music of this drive. I loved the company.

One of the sweetest things to me about being up at the cabin with my children and grandchildren is getting to see them with each other. At this point in my life, I can't even track how many moments I've observed. But I do try to notice, still.

Deacon has great confidence in his basketball abilities. With good reason.

Van is the little big man. He likes a ball for all purposes.

Everyone played ball (except the photographer, this time). Here's Lesley, planning her next slashing cut to the hoop.

William having his way with a swing.

 

Deacon makes an awesome action hero.

William wanted to hold Gwen, which he was able to do with a little support.

Here's Gwen having a bath in the basin in the sink, which is also traditional for new babies.

 

Yesterday, Father's Day, we went down to see my folks. My brother and his wife were in town. Both my sisters came over, and some nieces and a nephew, and my aunt. I'm feeling the preciousness of the time I get to spend with these people, and my parents especially.

That's fourteen images. It's been wonderful. I might cry at any moment. But the people, I plan to share more updates, more frequently. So check back soon. Tomorrow, even.

Several important events have happened today.

1. Poem comes out of the manuscript. This is the shaggy manuscript that hardly anyone has read. I was recently reading this manuscript on a plane, making notes on the poems, thinking of alternative sequences, acting the part of a poet with my pen in hand, when I happened upon a short poem, just eight lines, in couplets. I got immediately overcome with the tedium of my task, closed the manuscript, and turned to some other activity, like thinking about how much I wanted to get off that plane.

Fast forward three weeks. I have the manuscript open, I'm making notes, considering my previous notes, etc. etc., when I come upon the same short poem. And was immediately overcome with the tedium of the task, closed the manuscript, and turned to some other activity, like "lying on my bed" without the distraction of "editing."

That poem is outta there.

2. My camera is in the mail. A few days ago, I started getting a glitchy shutter and an error code on my camera. WOE. After googling the matter, the consensus seemed to be that I had to send it to the factory. Across the country. To be fixed. WOE. So now I am waiting with bated breath for the healing to begin.

3. I have fully contemplated and comprehended the depths of my indolence. It is deep, the people. Deep.

4. Granola that you have made yourself is an all-purpose snack. That is all.

A couple of notes on writing.

1. Your plan is nonsense. That list you've made of what you're going to do today, during the 3 or 4 hours you've got to write? You will almost certainly not accomplish what is on that list. And if you do, it won't be an actual accomplishment, more like a gesture in the direction of the eventual accomplishment. You hope. Because that's how writing is.

2. You are going to flail. Just because the last time you took 3 or 4 hours to write, you were able to draft two whole new poems about of your piles of notes, it doesn't mean you're going to turn this particular pile of notes into a whole new draft. Probably, what you'll do is add more notes to the pile. More notes do not add up to a draft.

3. Writing does not necessarily make you feel good, at least not right now. If only you weren't in a coffee house, with people studying for their math exams on the left, their chemistry exams on your right, and talking on their cell phones straight ahead of you--if those people weren't there, and if Christmas music weren't playing overhead, and if all the above weren't be punctuated by steam and clinking ceramics, you could just break down and cry like you want to. Come on. You know you want to.

4. Sometimes the notes you added to the pile of notes yesterday turn into a draft today. Yippee!

5. So it turns out, that list actually does help. It just might take you a little longer to cross stuff off. A little longer, or a lot longer.

Music & lyrics.

If my life of late were put to music, these would be the lyrics:

blah blah blah blah stress blah blah

blah blah blah blah whine blah blah

blah blah stress

blah blah whine

I think I'll find something to buy.

The second verse, similarly, would go something like this:

blah blah blah blah I can't take it anymore

blah blah blah blah I am still on the internet!

blah blah no more

blah blah internet!

now I think I'll bake a cake.

However, in case you are worried that I might run out of rhymes, I discovered this weekend that shopping is a placeholder for other forms of self-care. Also, that I manage my anxiety better when I am writing. I'm still anxious, but I linger there less. So I am currently working on two poems, if by "working on" we mean "thinking about and taking occasional notes." Actually, that is what we mean, and it's acceptable, qua writing.

Also, I am rediscovering, as we speak, the curative powers of cake. Cake still works.

Lost.

I fear I have lost my blogging mojo.

I, who love the blog.

I am worried about this, because it feels like the thin end of the wedge to losing writing altogether.

If I can't drum up a little sentence or ten to write on a daily or every-other-daily basis, what then?

For blogging stood in as a proxy for writing proper. Kept me at it. Was in the near vicinity of other writing. Poetry, if you must know.

Today, I could have written about: the birth of a new grandson (yesterday). A funeral (today). A movie (The Town). A pile of new books. My Moleskine collection in which I can never quite locate the relevant notes I took at that one meeting. The farmer's market. The new/old Rock Band version my youngest son found. Having a grandson over while his folks were at the hospital with his new youngest brother. The pressing need to locate new restaurants to frequent.

There was a time when any one of those could have been a blog post.

I just feel the need to say it: some little writing space is closing off in my life, I don't like it, it actually makes me feel a little cold inside.

I'm going to find a way back in. I think I need to.

. . . and out.

Cold, cold, or cold medicine?

After a packed-full teaching and other faculty-work work week, after writing and delivering a paper, after seeing Bright Star, after taking a particularly emotional poem to my writing group and getting what felt to me like a small amount of gratuitous snark, I fell prey to what seems like my by-now-familiar stress-ailment--something very like a cold, with sneezing, a little fever, hot eyes, tendency to fall apart. But yesterday and today, I had no commitments, aside from some online chat appointments with students, so I was able to stay home, and found myself prone to resting. Actually prone. As in, horizontal, for much of both days.

Is it an actual illness? Is it the fact that it's a little bit cold in my house and, for that matter, outside? Or is it the generic cold medicine I took? I don't know for a fact, but the fact is, I slept a lot. And when I wasn't sleeping, I actually did a fair amount of my work lying in bed. Like, I don't know, Proust. Or Milton, or Swift; or Voltaire, Trollope, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Colette, and Winston Churchill.

I'm investigating as of this moment the feasibility of an academic discipline called Bed Studies. You study the cultural significance of beds and bed-related artifacts. In Advanced Bed Studies, you take classes and teach from bed. I am the founder of this discipline, though I give the nod to my forbears. I rest on the featherbeds of giants.

Very good.

In a document I call "Daily Writing," I had this to say about today:

sweaty shopping excursion, ugh
after all that bravado, feeling: RELUCTANT to start anew on the terrifying poem.

(Re the sweaty shopping: because I started to feel sweaty, I failed to buy a beautiful scarf that I am totally regretting at the moment. I hope no one else bought it before I get there tomorrow at 10 a.m., sharp, to snag it myself.)

But: back to the tedious story of me writing.

1. I got out my fat freewrite re terrifying poem.
2. I got out my ancillary notes on my fat freewrite.
3. I went shopping.
4. I took a shower to wash off the shopping sweat.
5. I ate my lunch.
6. I looked at my freewrites and ancillary notes. I took some more notes.
7. Exhausted from all the getting out and the looking and the note-taking, I lay down and finished my French detective novel.
8. I sleep-wrote.
9. I got up, slightly disgusted with myself for the self-delusional "sleep-writing" nonsense I was shoveling.
10. I WROTE A FRESH, FULL DRAFT OF THE TERRIFYING POEM.

Wrote and cried, cried and wrote. When he got home, the historian asked, "Are you okay?" I told him about the crying and writing. He said, "Yeah, you look like you've just been crying." I told him I had just finished the tear-stained draft.

And today, the writing--all of it--was very, very good.