Rain falls, gentle and steady, into this dark-as-night morning. The air is thick and humid, but a breath of coolness trails along my bare shoulders. There's a delicacy about this weather, a hesitance.

I finished my small editing project yesterday, prepped for next week's Monson class, worked on a poem, even submitted one. Today I'll turn my thoughts to reading . . . Dante, Edward Said, George Eliot. 

The next editing manuscript will arrive any day now, but apparently not on this day. So the shape of the hours is mine.

I'm trying to work out notions that may or may not become an essay. I'm trying to step further into some poem revisions. I'm trying not to second-guess my imagination but let it burrow and bumble its way forward into an unclear daylight. The only way to do this is to look as if I'm doing nothing.

What shall I tell myself? The freight of empty time is awkward to carry. I always feel alarmed, with an open day before me. Will I waste it on stupid things? What counts as waste and stupid things?

Anyway, an attempt . . . copying out some Dante, scribbling a few notes on Said, drinking in Middlemarch. Wandering from window to window, staring into the rain.