I was at my desk all day, except for a mid-afternoon walk with my neighbor, so I am feeling somewhat more caught up, editing-wise. This is a massive project, and I am only half done with stage 1, but at least I am now making noticeable headway. Editing can feel like paddling a fat river against the current. I spend many of my hours stuck on snags or eddying fruitlessly in the backwater.

Anyway, today, more of the same, except for a lunchtime meeting with the staff at the bookstore around the corner, where I'm hoping to set up a poetry event. Tonight I'll go out to my workshop group, so at some point today I've got to sort through poems and decide which draft I want to inflict on them. Otherwise, dishes and laundry and War and Peace, and Tuesday will muddle its way through the hours, dragging me along behind.

I'm feeling kind of lumpish this week, pacing obediently in my halter, getting-things-done-getting-things-done, but my pinging electric excitable poem mind isn't getting much of a workout. I miss it, though I know I need to lock it in the closet sometimes. But when it's there, I worry that it will wilt and die, and for the rest of my life all I will be is the person getting-things-done-getting-things-done.

When my friend Jilline was close to death, from metastasizing breast cancer, she wrote to me: "Don't let it take my precious brain."

How we are haunted by our minds. How we love them.