The weekend was just what I'd hoped it would be--reading, walking, reading, walking: two spacious and fortifying days. As a result, I woke up early this morning, well rested and in shape for a busy week. Today I'll be editing, then driving north; tomorrow I'll be back in class, and then the long drive home. But I'm feeling pretty relaxed about all of it.

I got so much necessary reading done: a close study of William Alabaster's sonnets; a big chunk of War and Peace; three or four Hammett stories on the side. The Alabaster poems were new to me, and I found them very beautiful and moving. The Hammett stories are insane, and Tolstoy is a god, and after a weekend with this trio how could I want to be anything other than a writer?

Sonnet 15

 

William Alabaster (1568–1640)

 

My soule a world is by Contraccion,

the heavens therein is my internall sence,

moved by my will as an intelligence,

my hart the element, my love the sonne;

and as the sonne about the earth doth run

and with his beames doth drawe thin vapours thence

which after in the aire doe condence

and power downe raine upon the earth anon,

soe moves my love about the heavenlie spheare

and draweth thence with an attractive fire

the purest argument witt can desire,

whereby devotion after may arise,

and theis conceiptes, digest by thoughts retire,

are turned into aprill showers of teares.