The furnace kicked on last night. I guess that means winter really is coming. Already I've been lighting evening fires; already I'm remembering how much I love to watch flames flickering behind glass as night draws its cloak around the house.

The freezer is full of peppers, corn, chard, tomato sauce. The woodpile is stacked high. Let the grim months begin.

This has been a slogging week at the desk, but I'm making progress, and I'm still managing to tamp down my longing to work on my own stuff. I'll save that for Monday, my birthday. I'll give myself the present of the day. I know it sounds terrible to say "tamp down my own longing," but that's the only way I can earn any money. Otherwise, I'd do nothing all day but chores and poetry, which in my life, at least, are mutually supportive: scribble, read, scribble, stare out windows, hang laundry, scribble, sweep a floor, read, stare out windows, wash windows, mow grass, weed, scribble . . . That might have been one of my problems in the apartment, when I was slowly and painfully writing not-good poems: I didn't have enough chores.

I've started rereading Gatsby again. Such a book. It's like Mozart.