The humidity is so thick this morning. Storms are forecast, and no wonder: you could slice this air with a breadknife.

Today the furnace guy is coming to clean the furnace, which we might want to use someday, though at the moment cold is hard to imagine. I've also got a Frost Place meeting about setting dates for next year's conference, and a yoga class, and a lot of Blake poems to read. Normally I'd be editing as well, but the project is temporarily on hold while we work out some issues about expectations and preferences. Translations can be a complex dance.

So I'll bake bread, maybe freeze kale, maybe make some tomato sauce. Maybe try writing, though that seems unlikely, with a house full of furnace guy.

I'm a bit dull for you this morning, my day riddled with soot and calendars. You may wonder why you're reading this letter. There's not much in it, beyond trudging.

But it's not as if I haven't been thinking. It's not as if this strange negative sentence opener doesn't lead me down the dark alleys. "It's not as if I'm not better/worse/sexier/more intelligent than I led you to believe". . . As rhetoric, the phrase leaps to self-defense, while clinging to self-deprecation. The words in their power manipulate speaker and listener. Language is a dangerous tool.