Going up north is like going to the mental health chiropractor. Blessed indeed.
Today/night:
Ok, today, I have:
Ahhhhh....
At the very, very good advice of my dear, dear friends Heartswater and PTM, I have canceled my classes at My Institution for tomorrow. I will teach at The Community College, but then I shall go home and grade, grade, grade allllllllllllll day and return, caught up-ish and refreshed-ish, on Tuesday. Or maybe on Wednesday. ;)
Hoo-boy, the squirrels are nuts today. They've moved into the one wall in my office, apparently. It's raining and windy and crappy out today, so they're having an indoor fun day, running up and down and up and down. The cats usually spend most Indoor Squirrel Fun Days going insane running back and forth at the bottom of the wall, but today they've apparently had enough. They are sleeping, squirrels be damned.
Going up north is like going to the mental health chiropractor. Blessed indeed.
Having not been up here in Voxland for a while, I was just reading back through a few of my old posts. I feel very fond of them, which is nice. I read this one just now, and remembered that Edward Abbey had actually written it before, in The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel, although he managed to do it in just one line:
Home is where, when you have to go there, you probably shouldn't.
:).
And now it occurs to me that it might be time to read that one again. That and Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison. Excellent.
I need to get back to thinking in words, again, to writing. I've been floating in the blue for a while now, spacing out, staring at the sea. It's been worrying me lately, but today I'm noticing it's maybe fine, good even. L came into the bar for dinner the other night, and said as much. I told her I'd been wasting a lot of time lately, and made some sort of apologetic noises about it. She just looked at me for a minute, that look where she cocks back on her hip, tilts one eye at you, and takes your entire measure in a glance. Then she said, "It's ok to waste time. You should do that."
Wise woman, that L. Being one of the most driven, effective people I know, I feel she's got pretty decent credibility about wasting time as a right choice. She's my boss at My Institution, and she's one of the best mentors I've ever had---wicked smart, morally sound, in every way, and simply the most constructively challenging teacher I've ever had. And I've had some superb teachers.
At any rate, she's right. I've been thinking, furiously, at full speed, for a good chunk of years, now. I think now of Dorothy Allison's line: "A [person] needs some dream time." I've been on dream-time this past month, and now that I think of it, thank God! This past year, teaching full-time for the first time, recovering from grad skool, keeping my life happening and in good enough health---man, I was starting to get really properly tired. ;)
It's like I've been innertubing down narratives, on that laziest narrative river of them all---TV shows. Specifically, Numb3rs. I turn it on, with its easy-peasy-intellectual-inquiry quality, and its family-that-likes-each-other quality and its smooth-problem-resolution quality, and just float on out on my imagination, gently bouncing and toodling along, from point to point.
This dream-time will have to recede eventually, at least by August, and I think it'll be good for it to ebb sooner. So like I said, I need to get back to thinking in words, to writing. I find myself interested in making some poems again, just little ones, little snapshots. I like snapshot-poems. I made a ton of them a few years back. It was a delightful time of paying close attention and finding a lot of beauty and interesting things.
Hmmmm....
am:
the bed is rumpled
around us; i do not want
to get up and go.
noonish:
class went well; then fell
apart, but the room was bright--
they took care of things fine.
evening:
wet greendark out there;
cats and i are dry inside
he'll be back home soon.
Feeling better, which is nice.
]]>