Fifty-three degrees this morning, and we're forecast to get a high temperature of only sixty-five. I am glad to see the last of that ridiculous heat, though the continuing lack of rain is painful. Still, it will be pleasant to work outside on a cool day, and that is my plan: weeding, deadheading, running the trimmer, and such.

Yesterday I performed my annual drawer and closet clean-out: sorting through ragged underwear and unforgivable socks, admitting defeat with the supposedly decent items I never seem to wear. This is one of the advantages/disadvantages of living in a tiny house with hardly any closets: the stuff must go. Last week I did a book cull, this week a clothes cull. Fall is on the way, and I'm clearing the decks.

Last weekend's class went well, I think. It's interesting to watch people wrestle with their imaginations--to note where they are willing to venture, where they are not. Some people get distracted by other people's imaginations: say, the metaphors and allusions embedded in literature. Some people get distracted by the intensity of their own real-life emotions or situations. So where does private invention start to create a wormhole through these distractions? What pattern or word or sound is the first opening?

I'm thinking of constructing a future generative class around the building of a long poem--maybe using Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" as the source of prompts and conversation. About once a year or so I find myself writing a very long poem . . . but why? Where does this need come from? And where does the stamina come from? These poems often turn out to be very important to me, both personally and developmentally. They are big, in more ways than one. They are also exhausting. But I've noticed that few people in my classes seem to push themselves into length. What would happen if I created a structure for that experiment?