My first full night's sleep in ten days or more. I did not budge till the alarm went off at 5. I did not wake at 2 or 3 and have to coax myself (or fail to coax myself) into another thin hour of doze. Now I am groggy and heavy-eyed and shuffling around the kitchen in pursuit of coffee, and I could not be more relieved. One solid night won't mend everything, but it will surely help me cope.

Yesterday I worked on my essay. I finished a batch of sharable teaching plans I had to do for the state epistolary-poem project. I got onto my mat, and I went for a walk with Gretchen. I harvested my fennel crop in anticipation of the ground freezing later this week. I read Olivia Laing's The Lonely City--which is stunning: a book I barely know how to speak about; a book that is a mirror for the world I am living in and writing about at the moment.

I am still not looking at any news. I feel as if I am in a state of self-defense. I am writing and reading about matters that are deeply raw, matters that, despite my logorrheic tendencies, I haven't written about before. They are matters that must be dealt with. I cannot allow the national wickedness to blight my work.

Today I'll trudge the streets again. I'll cook. I'll wander into the sleepy garden. I'll hang clothes on the cellar lines and haul firewood up the stairs. I'll wash dishes and I'll think. I'll think and I will find a way to write a sentence or two, a paragraph or two, a page. My words are disjointed. There are no transitions yet in this essay, no suave links, no mimicking of intelligence. Thoughts burst into language, like blots of wet snow thunking a windowpane. It is an ugly form of making, but it is making, and that is all I ask of myself right now.