What a gorgeous day we had yesterday! Soft air, birdsong, the flowering trees bursting into glory. I got sheets and towels onto the lines, the house cleaned, windows open upstairs and down. I worked at my desk; I baked pita for lamb sandwiches; I took a long a walk. Chuckie raced around the house with a breeze up his nose. Being alive felt like a sort of magic.

This afternoon I'll head north for an overnight in Wellington; then Monson all day tomorrow, the big PL event on Thursday, an interview on Friday . . . A fury of self-consciousness lies ahead, but this morning I'll walk with a friend, this evening I'll hang out with a friend, and a day with my high schoolers will be the perfect way to forget about myself.

I've been reading Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh, dipping into Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Yesterday I plucked a Lahiri story collection out of a free library. Fischer's American Founders is still sitting on the coffee table, waiting for me to embark. Outside the gulls are wailing, and inside I am thinking about books, and upstairs Tom is reminding Chuck not to drink his coffee. Everything overlaps and intersects; each moment is thick with pollen. Chuck sneezes and Sebald's narrator lingers at a lonely train station in Sussex and Tom slices bread and Aurora Leigh says to herself:

Alas, I still see something to be done,
And what I do, falls short of what I see,
Though I waste myself on doing. Long green days,
Worn bare of grass and sunshine--long calm nights,
From which the silken sleeps were fretted out,
Be witness for me, with no amateur's
Irreverent haste and busy idleness
I set myself to art! What then? what's done
What's done, at last?
                                  Behold, at last, a book.