This morning, I opened Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 and lighted upon a poem titled "Concerning Necessity." And as happens so often to me, the accidental words I read seemed to have been composed precisely for my state of mind, precisely for any answer I might attempt to dredge up about my so-called lifestyle, precisely as explanation for why ugliness and discomfort and boredom don't necessarily add up to misery. And in a way, it's a response to Charlotte's comment on yesterday's post: because, dearest, if I weren't idling over chickens and laundry, I would have nothing at all to write to you about. Literature is not enough of a subject; it requires, at least in my life, a balance of grunt work. Otherwise, it recedes away from my hands. Like the items for sale in the sheep's shop (which you may remember if you've read Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass), the more I try to pinpoint it, the more it eludes me.

Possibly this makes no sense, however.

In other news, Tom is leaving for New York this morning, and I'm preparing to be a single parent for a week. Good thing my older son is adept at using power tools, setting mouse traps, etc. For as my younger son once cheerfully told me, "You and I, we don't know how to do anything."