It's raining!

Chuck, confused by the unfamiliar tap and click, has been wandering wide-eyed around the house. Now he has settled on the back of the couch, perplexed but lulled, staring into the dark maw of the window.

We're supposed to have off-and-on rain for the next few days, and I fervently hope for more on than off. How beautiful it would be to enjoy a weekend of wet. 

Yesterday I chipped away at five different poem drafts, read a chunk of Ozick's novel Trust, got the house cleaned, went out to write. Today is recycling day, sheet-washing day, probably errand-running day; but then I can turn my thoughts back to the drafts. I can't tell what I think of the Ozick yet: it seems to be too aware of its own irony, but it was a young person's novel so that's forgivable. It is vast and messy and surprising and exuberant; also judgmental; also ridiculous, especially in its figurative language and its stock characters: "lawyers," "poets," "society girls," "rich people." Reading it feels like living inside the head of an imperfectly observant but very opinionated, ambitious, performative, and overreaching 1960s-era young woman novelist, so in that way it is a complete success.