My Cabinet of Distractions

Eve.

2009-03-30T22:42:00.001-04:00

Big things are afoot here in the Cabinet, possibly the biggest since its creation. You should now update bookmarks and browsing routines so as to find me in my brand new digs. Tres chic, non?

You'll still be able to access everything about the old Cabinet, but I'm also not making the old Cabinet disappear. It's the best kind of move ever: I don't have to pick up anything heavy, and I can come back to the old house whenever I want.

Little mouth.

2009-03-29T22:05:00.000-04:00

All hail the new season.

2009-03-28T19:07:00.002-04:00

For now, my world is these spots of green, these shoots of new, dotted with fuzz and damp. Sharpnesses go soft; ground prepares to disappear for the next half-year. I pass the woods daily, wonder whether I should tramp and traipse and risk mud and groundsink before the poisonous weeds block me for the summer. Instead I strain toward tiny leaves, crouch to fallen blossoms, watch the world seed itself over. Instead I get closer to what I can already reach. Instead I practice focus. Instead I fight the impulse to autopilot.

Tutelary celebrant.

2009-03-27T18:02:00.001-04:00

He has been out there for just as long as this blog has been alive, and so this March marks the fourth time he's waited to welcome you to spring.

Mess of green.

2009-03-26T18:45:00.000-04:00

The way we live now.

2009-03-25T21:55:00.000-04:00

Settling and growing.

2009-03-24T22:56:00.005-04:00

It's been a day for feeling my way through things, which is a more difficult and more worthwhile process than the kinds of fixes for which I reached when I was younger and knew less.

Let's just stick with that theme, shall we?

2009-03-23T21:46:00.006-04:00

Then his production values get better! And it turns out that he's the son of Jimmy Choo (yes, that Jimmy Choo).

It is all the more important that we dance today, and dance well, because my brother is now thirty. For real. I can't believe it either.

On being my own biggest time suck.

2009-03-22T21:10:00.005-04:00

Perhaps the thing I hate most about grading--much of which experience, for me, is taken up with having grading to do but very actively not wanting to do it--is that it helps enable my worst time-sucking capabilities. Or at least so I tell myself, here at the end of a weekend wherein I swore I would finish a batch of papers that, realistically, there was no way I'd finish. I'm approaching the halfway point, which should feel like a small triumph, and I'm chugging along through it and doing my very best--as, it turns out, did my students. It's possible that I've never received such a strong batch of essays all from one class. And so I sit here and hold myself down for one paper and then let myself float off for a few minutes, and then I hold myself down for another paper and then let myself float off for a few more minutes. Right now--as you surely must know--I'm floating. Off.

On the other hand! If I didn't have to grade, not only would I stop getting paychecks, but I'd also probably never discover things like this:

The dude at 1:11 is priceless.

Lines and curls.

2009-03-21T08:57:00.001-04:00

Posted.

2009-03-20T22:55:00.000-04:00

Reticulata.

2009-03-19T23:33:00.002-04:00

Suddenly this year, in addition to all the tiny crocuses, we have tiny irises all over downtown. Bulbous splendor (for it turns out that these little ones aren't rhizomatic--who knew?)! Thank goodness for those who think ahead for us.

Vitality is on my mind this week--as in, what sustains it? And what swamps it? I feel myself being drawn off in every direction, and putting on clamps to staunch my outward flow is probably not going to be easy or entirely well-received, as choices go. And yet.

Night off.

2009-03-18T21:49:00.001-04:00

Some nights I find myself just plain tired.

Unsuspected steps.

2009-03-17T22:37:00.002-04:00

I have started passing these steps on an almost-daily basis. They lead from an old driveway into an old wood, and as far as I can tell, there are only these five. They put me in mind of a doorway I once saw that led from everywhere to everywhere: just a doorway, with no door.

Today was warm enough that at sunset, tiny birds were still pipping away in the trees.

Work.

2009-03-16T21:08:00.003-04:00

It's a nice thing that when I told my morning class that it was good to see them again, now that we're back, I was telling them the truth. It really is good to see them all again.

Another open letter.

2009-03-15T21:38:00.005-04:00

Dear universe,

You know that I'm always careful about what I wish for, and right now is no exception. But I think that I might be just about ready for my very own lovely and charming geeky partner in crime, if and when you get around to sending him my way (or vice versa). I've figured out that I've always gravitated toward brilliant men I could help heal or boost somehow, and I know exactly why that is. And I've figured out that during all these years I've thought I should end up with an academic or an intellectual, what I've really meant is that I think I want a dude whose unselfconscious geekiness will rival my own, whatever his particular thing is (within reason: please let this next one be able to talk to other people, because that last go-round was rough, socially speaking). Someone who'll get it when I want to spend a couple of hours sticking my lens into dried grasses would be appreciated. Someone who's into kitchen dancing would also be pretty great.

I think I'm ready to do my part, and my eyes are wide open. You just let me know.

Sincerely,
Dr. S

More than meets the eye.

2009-03-14T23:37:00.003-04:00

After lunch, downtown in my village:

Dr. S: Look! Someone made a Transformer face on that car, with tape. I'd take a picture if I didn't think it would make them feel self-conscious.

Dr. S's friend: I think that if you put a Transformer face on your car, you're not going to feel self-conscious about anything.

Dr. S: True.

[click]

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons!

And then to go from one badass face to another--this one in the woods on the way home--made for a pretty excellent Saturday afternoon.

The road back.

2009-03-13T23:22:00.002-04:00

Students are making their ways back to town, one by one by one. If I could, I'd say that I'm not at all apprehensive about the amount of work ahead of all of us. But I can't, because I am apprehensive. Instead, let's think about Innovations in the Photographic Arts, shall we? And let's also think about the care of the body: today a massage, tomorrow a haircut. I will make myself as ready as I can.

Out in the day.

2009-03-12T23:15:00.003-04:00

It was a day that went on and on. A cat yawned, and I was there to catch it. Some other part of the world bloomed bright in an Ohio kitchen, and I crept beside it to take it home for someone who hates our world's cold grey.

A beloved friend drove me over backroads through my county to a restaurant I haven't visited in years, and I spent our lunch trying to figure out what the sign in the window across the street said.

Batteries.

Captions.

2009-03-11T23:53:00.000-04:00

I call this shot "My flaming-sworded friend returned from her parents' place, and because I finally had my car fixed this morning, I offered to drive us to the grocery store, and then we saw this sunset."

I call this shot "Clearly my excellent dog friend has never heard of TtV."

And I call this shot "Thank goodness spring really is on its way here."

First spring night.

2009-03-10T20:28:00.004-04:00

Even if we're not yet at the equinox, I'm declaring tonight the first night of spring: the temperature went up and up and up all day--preparing to plunge tomorrow--and I ate my dinner in the breeze from the back door.

Still: it's possible that no one I know, anywhere, was as pleased today as this one bee. "Have you seen the crocuses yet?" a friend asked me the other day. "No, I haven't," I had to reply. But all of a sudden, this afternoon, there they were.

And so begins the last week of winter.

2009-03-09T23:03:00.003-04:00

Not quite exactly, of course; we've still got a good twelve days to go. And three years ago it snowed on the first day of spring. But all over the village, the signs are starting to show.

Promiscuous rest.

2009-03-08T22:25:00.004-04:00

One of the lovely things about break is that it's possible to mix up into one's day Lois Lowry, Man with a Movie Camera, Charles Dickens, and The Devil Wears Prada, with some desultory reading of The New York Times and some goofing around with a lonely cat on the side.

One of the less lovely things about break is discovering, at the end of a weekend, that you've barely been out of your own apartment--though, to be sure, yesterday's warm weather (and the ability to open all the un-plastic-wrapped windows in the place) sure helped bring the outside in.

Tomorrow: a long walk, unless there's another torrential downpour.

The contraption!

2009-03-07T18:32:00.002-05:00

I happen to know the location of a few things in Cleveland--including A) the two high schools I visited this week; B) Case Western Reserve University; C) a great Thai restaurant near Case Western; and D) the art supply store across the street from the great Thai restaurant. Plus a theatre somewhere on the west side, but for that one I need written directons.

Because I needed to get black artboard and black tape in order to make my Through the Viewfinder contraption, I was especially glad about D. (And because it's been awhile since I had good Thai stir-fried noodles, I was especially glad about the proximity of D to C.) I came home from the big city with both artboard and tape, and this afternoon, I set up shop with my craft knife and my cutting surface and built the thing. Now the real fun can start (as can the process of figuring out the optics behind, say, the doubling of so many things in today's picture...).

I promise that you are soon about to see more than just Trees Through the Viewfinder.

By the way: Keri Smith is a genius.

Late return.

2009-03-06T23:14:00.001-05:00

Now I'm home from Cleveland--where you didn't even know I was! I was on a business trip of sorts, visiting a couple of Cleveland-area high schools and observing their English classes (and, at one, the aforementioned famous poet--it's a very well-off high school). It's always a strange, profound pleasure to leave town for even a few days, like a little escape, and that feeling wasn't diluted much by the fact that I was still working--or even by the fact that I had to retrain myself in the ways of aggressive sub/urban driving in order to hold my own against fortysomething moms and overmoneyed twentysomethings in their luxury SUVs and sedans. But just as strange and profound, almost always, is the return to town, and so it is that I'm glad to be back in my crowded, cluttered little space.

Criss cross.

2009-03-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

Up one street, down another; up one hallway, down another. Navigating the east side of Cleveland today made me grateful, yet again, for that family trip back in the day, when my father handed me the map of D.C. somewhere in western Pennsylvania and let me know that I'd be the one navigating us into, around, and back out of the city. If you know how to be the navigator for someone else, you have a better shot at being a competent navigator for yourself, too. Profound, no?

This web.

2009-03-04T22:53:00.003-05:00

Today I seem--without even trying--to have convinced a famous poet that he should revisit Middlemarch. I call that a good day's work.

A pause.

2009-03-03T23:06:00.001-05:00

We have this two-week break, and my gratitude for Time is unparalleled and unprecedented.

Today one of my excellent friends is another year older, and for that I am also limitlessly grateful.

Rural living.

2009-03-02T21:05:00.000-05:00

Just in case you wondered.

Making.

2009-03-01T17:15:00.005-05:00

You ask can you help them understand what poetry is and why it matters and so I pull out my books and sit thinking with them about macro lenses and the curve of a roof falling down and the wool of his wide brimmed winter hat and the hiss of rocks and the fire behind my retinas when he sang out verses over the wine and I think of the people who have gone the poet's voice coming out of the loudspeaker the day of his memorial service and the box-builder who made world after world in box after box and the boy with the flaming hair who loved writing verses about the girl who left him and the girl who stood up unannounced and chanted stanzas from memory and the woman who declaimed Chaucer to cows and I think

of the spring bleeding into these branches at the side of my road

and I think I will tell them that poetry is nothing less than the mattering of this life's merest matter.

Now it starts.

2009-02-28T23:59:00.002-05:00

Branches are budding all over town here, and I am done with a batch of grading, which means that it's really a break. For real. Which means it's time to dance.

Open, up.

2009-02-27T23:52:00.002-05:00

And now we break, and the world feels possible again.

Tag in a tree.

2009-02-26T23:15:00.000-05:00

Letting be.

2009-02-25T22:25:00.003-05:00

Tonight, right now, even though I am not finished with the work I could stay up to do, I am taking a stand on my own behalf, against the part of me that works under the impression that I might never be able to do enough or be enough, and I'm going to make a bowl of steamed milk in my red latte bowl and take it to bed with me. There is more to be done, for certain, but the most important thing to be done at this moment is that I draw back in and cultivate my little core of strength for the morning.

Every night, I have to make a decision about when I'm going to go to bed. Not since before high school have I had a regular bedtime or a fully settled bedtime routine. Normally my bedtime is set by my exhaustion. That is perhaps something I'd like to change, as I continue pioneering my new strategies for actively cultivating calm--not just when I'm done working, or when I'm feeling crisis-stricken, but all the time.

Looking it new.

2009-02-24T19:47:00.010-05:00

I don't have time for this, that's for damn sure, but somehow pioneering off into a new direction with the camera has helped take some pressure off of the week. Funny how creativity works.

It was sometime last fall that I first read about "through-the-viewfinder" photography, a weird DIY Rube Goldberg machine of a camera modification that basically ends up using a vintage twin lens reflex camera as a filter for a digital camera.

What one does is install the TLR at the base of a long, light-proof tube and then take a picture of the image visible in the TLR's viewfinder (which is at the top of the camera--in the image above, I have the camera lying on its back, and the image you see in the top lens is not unlike the image you'd see in the viewfinder if the camera were standing up and facing in the direction that the top of the camera is in now).

At their most stylish, TTV setups involve a lot of black cardboard and black tape and a carefully cut hole for the TLR lens. But lots of TTV practitioners who describe how they've done their work end up saying something akin to "I didn't have the patience for that shit; I'm using a cereal box wrapped in electrical tape!" I suspect that I will end up somewhere in between; I don't have time to mock up a box, and so for now I've just been using an old paper towel tube. Here's my impressionistic shot of one of my first attempts; it gives you a sense of the tube. I think that before I took this one, I hadn't even bothered to pull the rest of the paper towels off of the cardboard. I was that excited.

And then one crops out everything but the square of light, which then gets reworked as the image itself.

When I bounded out of bed this morning (and promptly decided to knock off the lattes for a day, because I clearly still had more caffeine in my bloodstream than was ideal), I decided to try the new camera setup--sans cardboard altogether--to catch the sunlight that floods my bedroom window in the morning. If you click on either of tonight's window images, you'll see one of the things that makes this kind of photography appealing and strange: all the flaws and scratches and accumulated dust in the old Kodak at and through which I'm now shooting--not to mention the curvature of the viewfinder itself--gives a different kind of texture to the end result.

It's my everyday world made strange and new: just the way I like it. And it's a return to something like the raw-edged negative carrier I used in photography class two years ago; one of the tricks of TTV is that you end up with an image much more ostentatiously framed than usual.

You can check out Karen Walrond's project "The Ranch" for further examples of how and why I'm so excited to start playing with this technique. A good part of my spring break is going to go toward getting this baby kitted up for further experimentation.

And then when I'm really settled, I just may have to start experimenting with the wacky stuff people do to modify cameras like my new-old Duaflex so that they'll carry 35 mm film. If I get really daring, I may even roll some 620 in there and see what happens.

Look at me go.

(Also, in totally related and totally excellent news, it turns out that instant film (aka Polaroid) might not die out after all! Check out The Impossible Project.)

Ice and fire.

2009-02-23T23:04:00.005-05:00

Heading out to class this morning, I grabbed my camera, which I haven't been using enough; the number of images you've seen lately that are views from my window-side home desks tell you as much as anything about where my priorities have been of late. I had about two extra minutes on the trip to school, but each quick stop repaid me. Just having stopped to see that cardinal blazing out its song would have been enough.

I'm venturing into a new photographic frontier, too, about which I'll say more tomorrow. But here's a first glimpse. I suspect that some of you will know right away what you're looking at... I don't quite have my tools together, but once I do, things are going to get fun. They may even get, as one of my students would say, epic.

Cooler downing.

2009-02-22T19:45:00.001-05:00

For another year in a row, I will be glimpsing the Oscars over the internet instead of watching them: there is simply so very much before me.

Hot bruised sky.

2009-02-21T23:28:00.000-05:00

Wilderness of stones.

2009-02-20T23:40:00.000-05:00

Handleless cup.

2009-02-19T23:30:00.001-05:00

I have a tiny collection of handleless cups, and today it grew by one tiny cup. I have developed an incredible fondness for Etsy. I suspect that part of my fondness grows from its being a virtual substitute for the walks I used to take through little galleries in Cambridge, and before that through my favorite artists' cooperative in Ithaca. Today, for the first time in awhile, I found myself wanting and needing to be away--just plain away. Looking back at last year, I see that it was on this exact Thursday that I let myself just disappear, skip out on what I was meant to be doing and take off for something without anyone else. It was also right about this time that I masterminded my trip to St. Ives. It may be time to mastermind something similar now, even if it's only something else virtual.

The handleless cup thing started with a person I think about a lot even though I barely remember him: a ceramics artist my parents knew when we first moved to Indiana. He lived in the next town down the highway, the county seat, in the kind of strange vaguely run-down nineteenth-century townhome that made up that town. I could probably still take you right to its door, or to where its door once was. As far as I can figure, that ceramics artist--whom I thought of as a potter--had taken up residence in that little town because it was a good stopping place while he got ready for what he was really going to do. And we were great beneficiaries--my parents, because they had someone to talk to, another craftsperson who was from somewhere else and probably wasn't going to fit in in that weird place; and I because, though I was often bored and restless when we paid visits, I've somehow ended up with many of the pieces my parents bought from him over the years: the big bowls, the strange teapot, and the organically lopsided green and white yunomi.

It was in St. Ives, prowling around the artists' studios and the galleries and shops, that I learned they're called yunomi. I'd always just thought of that mug as my handleless teacup, the one with the improbably narrow ring as its base, the one that requires artfulness and real care in drinking.

And a three.

2009-02-18T21:27:00.000-05:00

And a two.

2009-02-17T20:26:00.001-05:00

This week, green things have begun to reappear, just in time to throw a lifeline until it's time for more of them.

And a one.

2009-02-16T00:24:00.000-05:00

Practice makes practice.

2009-02-15T23:17:00.003-05:00

Several weeks ago, I finally brought myself to order a yoga mat and a balance ball so that I would have good tools for exercising in my own home. Last weekend, I took the further step of starting to attend yoga classes at our massive athletic center. Not very long after my first class began, I was already sweating and exerting myself more deeply than I have for a long time, in a way that I am quickly coming to love.

I've resumed exercising, after a long time away from it, because I think I see myself starting to loosen down into my age, and I don't much like it. Slowly, it's been dawning on me that I've been making the creeping non-choice just to start letting go, and it's way too early for that. Yoga on campus is a funny place to make one's peace with age, though: most people in the classes I attend are a good fifteen years younger than I am--and fifteen years thinner and more flexible. But when my teacher made a comment today about how some of us had more years on us than others, I took her comment for the truth it was. And that's the beauty of this teacher and this practice: both are about owning up to what I actually am, rather than what I might wish I were. I have been dispersing myself a lot since coming home last summer--if the process of dispersal didn't begin much longer ago--and I feel as though now it's time to gather back what's gone out.

Those of you who have been reading may remember that three years ago--can you believe it?--at about this time, I was making cryptic comments about how something big was coming, and just you wait, something big is going to happen. I was right: it is. But it's different than what I expected. Then, I expected that if I just kept building up and building up, suddenly I'd become this fount of creative production. Books would get written. Fame might be had. And those expectations meant that I felt as though I was letting everything down when I stayed in the building up and building up stage--as though I were my own false prophet.

This semester, I might be realizing that the big thing that was coming was, in fact, simply my life, and a reconception of my real life not as a big upcoming performance for which I'm always practicing but instead as a practice, plain and simple. I'm not going to perfect it--and even to type those words tonight feels slightly shocking to me.

One mini-revelation came to me right after I literally fell out of a pose during yoga class on Monday. The student who was meant to teach us didn't show up (!) and so another student took her place. Partly because his own practice is far more advanced than mine, it was more difficult for me to follow him (very much a novice teacher) than our regular teacher. At some point, we flowed into a familiar pose by way of an unfamiliar path, and before I knew it, I was starting to topple, collapsing to the floor like the purple cat toy I loved as a child: push the button underneath the black plastic base on which she stood, and her limbs and body bent and crumpled over. But rather than feel embarrassed or self-deprecating, I untoppled myself and tried the pose again. I hadn't hurt myself going down, probably because the whole point of these classes is to attain a state of effortless action, movement that follows from loosening and extension rather than from strain--and so, though I was working hard, I was also completely loose.

All week, I thought about that fall. I thought about it when I just wasn't getting around to posting here for much of the week. I thought about it when I didn't get to practice the piano as much before my Thursday lesson as I wanted to, and then when I wasn't able to be as focused at that lesson as I'd like, simply because it follows hard on the heels of my office hours. I thought of it when I missed a poetry reading I wanted to attend, simply because I couldn't see a way to lever it into the evening without pushing myself perilously close to sleeplessness before an early morning obligation. Every day, I get up and lunge forward and reach and look toward where I'm reaching, and I do my best to be open and to stretch myself as far as I can, and sometimes I overreach and fall down. Everything seems to be going at least a bit more easily as I'm adjusting to this idea of experiencing the falls as part of my real life, not as obstacles on the way to my real life.

Sweet crooked valentine.

2009-02-14T22:25:00.003-05:00

After my mother's knee surgery was over on Thursday afternoon, my father pulled the car around to the front of the doctor's office, driving it up over the curb so that she wouldn't have to step down. "We've never seen a husband do that before," said the nurses.

Then they asked my mother, "Do you have any special plans for Valentine's day?"

"With a husband like this," she said --

On the phone, I cut her off. "You said, 'With a husband like this, every day is Valentine's day,' right?" We were talking on the phone while my father picked up her Vicodin at the pharmacy and their pizza at the Pizza Hut next to the pharmacy. Though she'd only been out of surgery for a little while, she was completely lucid and not at all nauseous, the beneficiary of apparently highly advanced anesthetic technology.

And what's funny is that I know so many perfect things that she could have said to those nurses, and that she has said over the years, that I can't even remember what she told me she did say. In my imagining, she told them that in her love, every day is special; every day is Valentine's day; and she and my father celebrate being each other's Valentine every time they see each other.

I told one of my classes some version of this story on Friday and said, "May you all have such love in your lives." I'll say the same to all of you tonight, too. May we all.

[A third day away, whereupon not posting starts to feel like negligence.]

2009-02-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

High winds ripped through my part of the world the other day, carrying away our glorious mid-February heat surprise and also doing things like taking the dragon down. Hurtling him, even.

By the end of today, and the end of this week, I am feeling vaguely blissed out and tired--but in an excellent way, perhaps because of my continued efforts to exert myself in centering activities, about which more tomorrow.

[A second day away.]

2009-02-12T15:15:00.001-05:00

Somehow, I keep making today just Darwin's Birthday, not Darwin's and Lincoln's Birthday. From that, I suppose you can see where my historical allegiances lie.

Happy birthday, Great Men. And happy recovery, Mama of mine.

[One day away.]

2009-02-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

Gift.

2009-02-10T23:42:00.002-05:00

Here is a moon for my friends who can't sleep and for my friends who are lonely and for my friends and loved ones who are sad or worried or grieving. Tonight my whole world is noisy and misty with snow-melt, but the night of that moon, all was clear and quiet and still.

My love in winter.

2009-02-09T23:07:00.001-05:00

Climbing up that hill.

2009-02-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

Though we had already sweated through an intense yoga workout this afternoon, when my flaming-sworded friend and her excellent husband invited me to join them on a sunset/moonrise hike at the environmental center, I did not say no. And I'm glad I didn't: I realized that I've never seen the prairie in the snow before, because two years ago we didn't have much in the way of snow (and when we had it, I didn't venture down there). Today's outing gave us prairie snow, foot-slipping iced snow up wooded hills, and then a view of our whole world with a moon on top. If I had to call it right now, I'd guess that I'll still be able to walk tomorrow. But we'll see about that.

Crossroads.

2009-02-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

Unlikeliness.

2009-02-06T23:45:00.001-05:00

And yet, who knows for certain?

The end of the week would seem to have thrown me for yet another loop, but I'm continuing to try to continue to try to do my best not to lose the thread altogether. I find myself wondering what Freud would do with my fingers' just having put "lose the threat" down, seemingly of their own volition.

Serenade.

2009-02-05T23:20:00.002-05:00

When a man comes to your campus and reads a story about cowboy piles, well, boy howdy, you sit there and listen to it.

Deliberation.

2009-02-04T22:54:00.004-05:00

On Saturday, after I stretched myself from head to finger to toe, after I photographed the ice outside, after I read some things and watched some things, after my brain had ratcheted down from the week, I picked the three greeny-blue ones out of my carton of organic eggs and I broke them together with some water and whisked them up and cooked them into a cheesy omelette, forgetting for a moment that a year ago I had no idea how to do this very thing.

Too often lately I'm feeling as though the best I can do is keep my head in the neighborhood of above water. The good news is that most things are less emotionally fraught than perhaps ever before in my life, as I finally accept some of the things that people tell me about myself and where I fit in the world. (I did not tell you that a few weeks ago, I faced the question of what word I wanted to have guiding this year. You may recall that last year, I decided that 2008 would be the year of writing--and lo and behold, it did go in that direction in a couple of surprising ways, as witness the article whose proofs I returned yesterday, and the project from which that article comes. But when I confronted this year's question, I was startled by how quickly "power" surfaced as what I wanted this year's word/whatever to be. As in: what if I actually dared to step up and take full hold of the power that I know I have? We'll see where that goes. It's such a different idea than "control" or "strength"--the former of which I gave up even wanting, years ago; the latter of which I already hold firm in the look of my eye and the pit of the small of my back and the spread of my toes. And I know that part of the reason I want to feel out this idea of power this year is that the fall will see me up for tenure, and I can already feel transitions taking place that are making me ever more aware of the ways in which I could just donate my life away if I'm not careful and deliberate.)

That paragraph? That's how it is these days: on the surface, I get my things done, I eat my meals, I walk to my office, I teach my classes with as much depth and gusto as I can put into them, I go on to my meetings, I walk my way back home. But underneath and around, lots of parentheticals await my fuller attention, lots more even than what's here tonight.

While I cooked up those eggs, you would not have believed the way the world was shining.

The coming noise.

2009-02-03T23:56:00.000-05:00

Tonight might be the last night when I'll only be able to give you an image with little or no caption: I've just mailed back the corrections to the proofs of that article I began working on almost exactly a year ago, and if the journal accepts the changes, it's possible that that sucker will be in print in a month's time. And that is good news indeed--for more reasons than I have time to talk about here, especially given that there's still all manner of class preparation to do for tomorrow.

What's cooler than being cool?

2009-02-02T22:08:00.002-05:00

Once again today, I had the opportunity to demonstrate in a most public forum that I do not lose my cool, even when provoked.

The very look of quiet.

2009-02-01T21:04:00.002-05:00

Here it is: what was here last night and gone by mid-afternoon today.

A pause for breath.

2009-01-31T23:36:00.002-05:00

Yet more falling.

2009-01-30T12:08:00.000-05:00

Encased.

2009-01-29T22:35:00.000-05:00

Covered.

2009-01-28T23:17:00.002-05:00

When the flakes finaly fell, they were small and fat like love notes.

Now, glitter below and glister above, my path by lamplight is six inches higher in hardpack, my footsteps groaning all the way home as though I were the world's ghost, as though I tracked the right wide floorboard, the broad plank on an iced ship.

Patter and hiss.

2009-01-27T23:55:00.001-05:00

Padding home over the snow and under the ice falling from the leading edge of a coming storm, I was back on the white beach of old summers, working my legs by fighting for footholds in the sands the nearest waves could not reach.

Off.

2009-01-26T23:22:00.004-05:00

It wasn't even like this here today, which is part of the reason I'm posting this picture. Tomorrow will be a full-on grading day, and I find that I am tired in advance. Fortunately, I have things like this to keep me fully, continually intrigued.

Look out below!

2009-01-25T22:54:00.002-05:00

Here you see my resident birdseed gobbler just after he's lost his grip on the feeder. It took him all of 45 seconds to get back on the house and continue emptying it out. And because of the plastic film on the windows (which also creates the smeary-filter effect in this image), I can't even pound on the glass anymore to try to frighten him off. Now I have to bang the back door--which gets old after ten or fifteen rounds.

Of course--because it's Sunday night--this slipping squirrel is also a pretty fit image of what my intellectual life feels like right this second.

The business of the day.

2009-01-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

Ssh, ssh.

2009-01-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

More snow on more stalks.

2009-01-22T23:32:00.001-05:00

The return of visible sun is meaning so much.

Unexpect.

2009-01-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

I'm getting used to having the ground covered, and I'm getting used to striding purposefully from one place to another, and I was just about to get used to not taking time for pictures. Fortunately, something possessed me to grab my camera bag as I left for class this morning, and by the time I left the officehouse, heading for my last meeting of the day, something special was happening with the light and the weeds. I wouldn't have thought this image would be my favorite from the day, which just goes to show that one never knows.

Some necessity.

2009-01-20T23:21:00.001-05:00

What I need--I'm beyond wanting and on into needing now--is an additional brain. I'm impatient that I can't get all of these things done with the expediency and thoroughness I want. So: nothing for it but to rest up and make another try tomorrow, since that extra brain doesn't seem to be showing up.

Carrying on.

2009-01-19T23:23:00.003-05:00

Sometimes teaching happens in spaces that are not classrooms, and all day today counts as one of those times.

Cold.

2009-01-18T23:33:00.002-05:00

It was so cold on Friday that when I stopped to take pictures of the crabapples in front of the library, my fingers started to hurt even though I was wearing two pairs of gloves--my full-fingered ones and also my wool-and-polarfleece fingerless ones. It was worth it for the pictures. But it was really, truly as cold as I've felt it getting for a long time. This afternoon, I dug out my car (for the first time since coming back two weeks ago) and made my way to town on some errands, one of which was to acquire some window film to weatherproof my apartment. Somehow I hate the idea of cordoning off my living room window--what if I can't get good pictures of the birds anymore? And yet the drafts are so profound that I haven't been able to open my curtains for nearly two weeks--clearly not acceptable.

Tomorrow, I will spend my day memorializing. I hope that you will be able to, as well.

Delivery.

2009-01-17T23:45:00.000-05:00

Today, for the first time, I took home delivery of local, organic foodstuffs--the eggs and meats that will be staples in my diet for the next few weeks. Though the meat went straight to the freezer, the eggs went straight to the kitchen table for a photo session; the blues were an especially nice surprise. Bless those hens.

Sunrise, sunset.

2009-01-16T21:55:00.002-05:00

My bedroom window, first thing in the morning.

My officehouse wall, last thing in the evening.

Sigh.

2009-01-15T23:51:00.002-05:00

There aren't a lot of days at the end of which I say to someone, "If I ever act that way, please kick me," but today was one. And when I thought I was all out of the woods, at the day's very end, there came one last little act of utterly willful misunderstanding. Which I am now marking here in order to make enough peace with it so that I can leave it outside my skull when I go to sleep.

Surprise!

2009-01-14T23:06:00.005-05:00

I opened the door to leave for class this morning and found flurries coming down. A little more snow, I thought. Off I strode. But by the time I made it to the corner, I realized that this snow was all sticking--and that the road was covering over.

By the time I came out of class an hour later, it was snowing harder. I came home through the snow and had my lunch here in the bright, warm kitchen. (And I took some pictures of what was coming, because I already knew I was leaving the camera behind, rather than taking it out again in what was coming down so hard.) By the time I trudged back to campus for my second class of the day (the second largest of my career!), inches had piled up.

The snow kept on until long after I came home tonight. Sometime in the early evening, largely because the windchill is supposed to be so severe starting tonight (stated high temperature for tomorrow: 4º F; windchill tomorrow night -25º F), campus security had e-mailed to tell us to walk with friends, or to call someone if we were setting out on our own. So, before I left the officehouse, I called my flaming-sworded friend and her husband to alert them. No one was quite sure what was supposed to have happened next had I not shown up. "I figured, I'll just take the same route home I always take," I told them once I was back. "And that way, if I fall over, at least I'll be somewhere predictable."

Before I turned the corner toward home, I stopped short in the road near a streetlight, and there, before and all around me, were the falling shadows of the flakes floating to the ground all around me, there in all that evening silence.

Cottager.

2009-01-13T20:48:00.000-05:00

A stray cat showed up outside the bushes of the next-door building last week, and now, having been named for said builgin, he's received (temporary) quarters in the officehouse while he recuperates enough so that our excellent administrative assistant can take him into her own home. Every day he gets more playful and more frustrated about the fact that my office door has to remain closed to him because of allergies. I make amends by swinging his fringey mouse toy around every once in awhile, and by miaowing back to him through my closed door when he shows up to say hello-and-why-the-hell-are-you-hidden-away-in-there.

And by taking his picture--which one can clearly see he is fully into.

The delicacy.

2009-01-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

I have recommitted to walking to work instead of driving my car there; the snow and ice we've had lately has been a good goad. Happily, I find that I'm seeing more things again as a result.

All a-sparkle.

2009-01-11T22:07:00.002-05:00

Because I didn't have my camera to try to catch the effect, at dusk, of tiny glittery snow mica-flaked and sparkling over what had already fallen and crusted, I have to show you ice and snow from Friday. And sun! We saw a bit of that today, as well.

I am more scattered than I have been, filled up with the processes of getting the semester's logistics under control. I work towards spots of time and quiet, hoping they'll return as things get launched this week.

Warding.

2009-01-10T23:20:00.003-05:00

I have enough snow on me already! the dragon must have said, for we ended up receiving not so much more than was already caping him yesterday afternoon. I awoke to hissing, to my mind the most frightening of winter sounds, but even the falling ice didn't mangle the world too badly.

I continue to plot and scheme the semester, which gets underway in just under 36 hours, which shocks me over and over again.

Dinner before snowstorm.

2009-01-09T23:47:00.000-05:00

I call this piece "Walking to My Excellent Friends' House on an Icy Road."

A coming storm.

2009-01-08T22:44:00.002-05:00

Just as I began wondering whether we'd get any major snow this winter, the forecast came down: something like major snow is approaching, due to arrive here tomorrow evening.

I say "something like major" because every time I think of snow, I remember not being able to get to my car during the first week of classes in my second Rochester semester--and then, once I'd dug into my car, not being able to start it. I remember having to take a taxi to the first meeting of my second class. I remember how it snowed, day after day after day, from the beginning of January until the middle of February. We didn't miss a day in nearly six weeks; we got something like five feet of snow. I learned to drift in and out of parking places, riding strange billows of as-yet-unpacked snow, learning new ways to pilot my car even when its tires didn't feel as though they were making contact with the ground in any way.

And so a forecast of six to eight inches, or so, seems manageable. Lovely, even. Which doesn't mean that I won't go another round with my iced-in car tomorrow, getting it deiced and defrosted enough that I can get to the grocery store for what's left of the bread and milk that I'm sure my entire county is droving in to buy.

Today: sacrifices from my syllabus, a jettisoning of the books that just won't fit--and that I suspect I must have ordered under the delusion that a semester has eighteen weeks, not fourteen. What's left makes a syllabus I'm excited to start, though. This afternoon, I found myself wondering how it is that people doing introductory courses in my field find room to teach so many poems. And then I remembered: they don't teach so many novels. Ah. Yes. Having scratched out one novel, I am holding tight to the ones that remain. And though I am not deliberately setting out to frighten people off, I suspect that the first week's reading may do just that--at least to the ones who are faint of heart. To my mind, there's not really a way to tackle my historical period without tackling a whole lot of reading.

Something like an avalanche, even.

Little sentinel.

2009-01-07T23:06:00.001-05:00

Epiphany.

2009-01-06T23:17:00.003-05:00

In this dream, it turns out that someone has quite unexpectedly fallen in love with me, and when I wake up, I am so pleased by this development that I know the better part of my heart is still biding its time in hope.

Reset.

2009-01-05T23:10:00.005-05:00

And today, all of a sudden, I'm back in my regular life: a meeting, a lunch, conversations in hallways and in the post office and on village streets, a dinner, a television show, more conversations. Tomorrow I have every intention of noodling around with my books, building up days and weeks and units. Building, that is, this next semester.

Back on out.

2009-01-04T22:41:00.002-05:00

And now I have made the relatively short, relatively uncomplicated drive back from one home to the other. (You will be happy to know--if you are among those who care--that I took this picture well before the part of my drive that involves hours of interstate highways.) Aside from run-of-the-mill annoyances and the fact that gas prices jumped 40¢ between 27 December ($1.43) and today ($1.82), it was an absolutely uneventful journey. And once home, I fixed my vacuum cleaner (thanks to a key piece of advice from my engineer father: always check your belts! they might just be rattling around, attached to only one of their two contact points!) and was able to vacuum my living spaces properly for the first time since returning from England--which is to say, without having to use the 4" brush attachment to clean my whole apartment's floors.

Feels like a done day to me.

Patience.

2009-01-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

One measure of home is whether or not someone waits patiently for you to come to bed. (That's my side, at the right of the picture; to get into the bed, I had to slip in underneath her paws and nose as smoothly as possible.)

Errant.

2009-01-02T23:36:00.002-05:00

Before the very fine grilled pork tenderloin dinner, and before the giggle-inducing screening of Mamma Mia!, there were the errands, more errands than I've run in this town for years. One of the errands took me to the video store, where it seemed like cruel mockery to photograph the mysterious clamp on the building's exterior (holding it together?), but where this particular hot mess felt like totally fair game.

Nearly two hours of driving the car all over town for envelopes and postage and DVDs and cooking supplies made me glad that I don't do much stop-and-go in my irregularly scheduled life.

To the new year, a greeting.

2009-01-01T23:10:00.000-05:00

To the old year, the back of the head.

(So saith the dog, anyhow.)

(And it's a sorrow--albeit a very small one--to me that though I now have a proper (and in fact extraordinary) flash for my camera, I will never be able to use it to shoot the dog, whom it terrifies because of its resemblance to lightning, the only part of thunderstorms that she can still perceive now that she's deaf. Just a test of the flash the night I came home from the Mayhem sent the dog into a fit of trembling that earned me my first serious parental reprimand in a long time.)

Goodbye, year.

2008-12-31T23:14:00.004-05:00

It's been a lazy last day of the year, as so many days-after-Mayhem turn out to be. We do our best to stick it out until the new year; most of us, it would seem, are going to make it--and the rest will at least be reawakened in time for goodnight kisses. And I, myself, begin crafting resolutions to re-stoke my quiet and creativity as we turn the calendar yet again.

Happy new year, my friends.

Back home again.

2008-12-30T17:01:00.002-05:00

With very little incident but much fatigue, I have made my way back.

Presentation day.

2008-12-29T20:53:00.000-05:00

If you look carefully, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge. Here's the closest I got to it on this trip (from the end of the hall of elevators on my floor).

Wherein the unexpected happens.

2008-12-28T23:40:00.002-05:00

Tonight, I felt myself on the brink of a David Lodge novel when, through an act of utter generosity on the part of a senior scholar, I ended up at an invite-only party in the two-story suite of the President of the Mayhem. I don't have much more to say about that, so here are some things I saw today.

Progression.

2008-12-27T18:43:00.004-05:00

First I was there, and now I am here.

Time does fly when you're flying.

Emptying nest.

2008-12-26T21:14:00.002-05:00

In the morning, I'm off to the Mayhem. Though I contemplated leaving the computer behind, that contemplation didn't last long. But whether or not I'll be posting here, I haven't yet decided. If you don't hear from me, that's what's going on.

All is calm; all is bright.

2008-12-25T22:23:00.002-05:00

In my house, we watch movie after movie after movie, and the holiday goes on and on and on.

Night before.

2008-12-24T23:36:00.003-05:00

Once I had been in Indiana for a little while, I could finally see the edge of the rainstorm in which I'd been driving for hours: it cut a clean diagonal across the sky, and I was heading right toward it, right toward the line where the dark grey clouds gave way to a sunny afternoon. And so what if the sunny part of the afternoon didn't last too long? By the time the clouds were back, I was here, home, with my family and the sore-footed dog.

Chance sightings.

2008-12-23T20:54:00.002-05:00

Because the weather turned foul, I didn't leave after all.

First there was this titmouse. And then, when I was taking its picture, a woodpecker got in there for effect. Turns out, also, that I'd forgotten to shift the white balance on my camera--but I don't mind it so much. Sometimes the world looks good in blue.

What carried me through the afternoon.

2008-12-22T23:09:00.003-05:00

Originally, I had hoped to be heading to my family by this afternoon, but I revised that plan sometime last week when I realized that there just wasn't any way I could finish this semester's work before Monday dawned. (Leaving Gambier before December 23? Whatever. I could barely manage that feat when I was a student, for goodness' sake.) And then, as it turned out, today was a second day running of near-record-low temperatures--not my favorite kind of day to be driving the Aged Car through (or even near) frozen fields. (Last night and today were so cold that ice crystals formed on and around the inside surface of my bathroom window. I guess that's one way to figure out where you have a draft.) And so I was glad that I'd already decided to stay put until tomorrow.

Because the weather has been so cold, and because my windows are so leaky, I've kept the curtains drawn all day, trying to keep the heat my furnace is struggling so valiantly to produce. Around 2:30 p.m., I started to hear a ruckus outside my living room window. Peeking through the curtains, I was startled to find my bird feeder being ravaged. Squirrels raiding feeders is a big problem wherever there are feeders, so I've been surprised not to have squirrels making the relatively easy climb down from the gutter. But now, it occurs to me, I have a narrative for why the seed just seemed to disappear sometimes, particularly on days when I'd been away at school all through the afternoon...

For the next hour or so, I alternately spied on the squirrel and scared him/her off so that the whole game could start over. This squirrel was totally on to me but never once tsked me. Which is a good thing, since I'm the meal ticket as well as the voyeur.

Now, my grades are in (several days ahead of deadline, I'd like to note) and one of the recommendation letter sets I need to do is done. Which brings me to the brink of being out.

The bottom of the year.

2008-12-21T23:29:00.004-05:00

This year, the solstice (my holiday, as you may recall from years past) coincides with the beginning of Hanukkah, and so as I lit my first candles, I said thank you not just for the light's imminent return but also for this neat confluence of dates. In 2006, the solstice was the last day of the eight, so I lit my way there, day by day by day. This year, I will travel twice during these eight days, lighting my way back out of the dark. Tomorrow there will be seven seconds more daylight.

Today, as if to stress how low down and darkened we've gotten, the temperature plunged; the windchill is -17º F ("actual" temperature -2º). That picture? It's of the inside of my car's windshield.

For the second year running, I've missed my blog's birthday. Now we are three!