Ring around the moon.

I'm still feeling a little rocked by having read all of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674) between 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. yesterday. It's an extraordinary experience, making it possible to sense patterns and movements in a way that shorter sittings simply don't allow. But it makes a day go by, to be sure, to hear angels fall, demons revolt, the world get created, Adam and Eve get tempted, the future of the world get presented to them before they're expelled from Eden. I'll pipe up with more things to say tomorrow, I suspect. For now:

I think that this poem is gorgeous and somehow so, so sad.

After a lovely dinner with a student tonight, I walked outside and saw a half-sky-wide ring around the waxing moon. Oh, moon, I said to the moon as I crossed the street and picked my way through the thick mud, back to the officehouse. Oh, moon. We go way back, the moon and I. Some things, in their constant changing, never change at all. And some of us are tidal creatures to the core.

Goodnight noises everywhere.