A Few of the Things I Did Today

1. Wore a Carhartt insulated suit. Broke ice out of water buckets. Carried firewood. Tripped over the dog.

2. Wrote 33 lines of a poem. Can't stop thinking about them.

3. Spent time with a teacher who told me that he works with kids because adults are too unreasonable.

4. Ate ice cream in the middle of the afternoon.

5. Considered some ways in which Daphne du Maurier's stories differ from James Baldwin's stories. Procrastinated about actually writing down any of my ideas.

6. Read the introduction to Gregg Shorthand (1916), which tells me that I should think of commercial shorthand "as the highest form of writing."

7. Learned how to write "purchasing department" and "I am in receipt of your esteemed letter" in shorthand. Quickly lost interest in shorthand.

Dinner tonight: black beans and rice, sourdough bread, salad.