I'm feeling somewhat more pulled together this morning, which is a good thing as I've got a new editing project to start today and a final pre-Sarasota faculty zoom meeting this afternoon, plus various house obligations in between. In two weeks I'll be in Florida, which is hard to fathom. Tom seems more focused on it than I am: he actually bought new sneakers for the occasion, and a new bathing suit. Acquiring new clothes never even occurred to me. But then again, as he somewhat smugly informed me, "You'll be working. I'll be on vacation."

In other news: yesterday I took the plunge and sent the new poetry manuscript off to a publisher. My hopes are not high; few people have high hopes when they send off a poetry manuscript. But it's a first try . . . a first trial, I almost wrote, which is maybe more accurate. Few things are more depressing than serial manuscript rejections.

In the meantime I'll undoubtedly keep fidgeting with it, though I probably won't make major changes, at least not in this iteration. The manuscript came together quickly, once I actually allowed myself to focus on it, and that is my usual pattern, both with individual poems and collections. Once I get going, I revise at white heat: most poems are finished within days; few go longer than a few weeks. The collections, too, declare themselves emphatically. I am bossed around by my work.

Greetings from the old familiar couch corner.

I walked into the house just before 8 p.m., very glad to be home. As predicted, Young Chuck had decided I was no longer in the picture so was highly confused to see me again. But after leaping at me from around corners a few times, he decided to go with the flow and pretend I'd never been away. So the three of us had a cozy evening, and I went to bed as soon as I could, and now I am blinkily trying to remember how to start my day at 5 in the morning. Brooklyn time is not like Maine time.

Today I need to figure out what must get done: laundry, housework, catching up on mail, returning a library book, dealing with work stuff . . . Regular life is a blur.

What an odd visit this has been, so unexpectedly long and packed with event. The evening at Ragtime might have happened 6 weeks ago instead of 6 days ago. But today, finally, I'll be dragging my suitcase through Manhattan slush piles, all hopes pinned on the doughty Maine bus that will take me home. Chuck has probably forgotten I exist. But I know Tom hasn't.

Yesterday's snow fell hard and fast till midafternoon and then suddenly began to melt. So, by evening, restaurants and a few storefronts were beginning to reopen, light traffic had picked up on the streets, and the city was returning to its accustomed hum. There's still a giant mess out there: corners and crossings thick with slush, cars buried in snow and plow crud. I expect the commute will be ugly today, what with transportation delays and sidewalk despair. I'm not sorry I'll be zoom-teaching from the apartment rather than traversing the snow piles, though my setup will certainly be awkward. There are not a lot of good choices: too many dark corners without outlets, too many odd little islands of wobbly internet. So the best solution seems to be propping myself up in bed with the laptop on my lap. Not exactly a professional look, but one must make do.

 NYC Blizzard Photo Gallery

5th Avenue in Brooklyn around 7:30 a.m. It's a major commercial thoroughfare but we were walking straight down the middle of the street. Hard to tell exact accumulation because of the wind, but definitely pushing 2 feet.

6th Avenue in Brooklyn, mostly residential. It's a great day to have no responsibility for shoveling out a car.

The back courtyard of the bar. First we shoveled this. Then we had to close the umbrella and shovel the whole thing again.

Steve's next-door neighbor, sculpting a polar bear.

This was 5th Avenue in Brooklyn at about 9 p.m. last night. Steve and I were walking back to the apartment after shoveling the sidewalk around the bar. At that point only a few inches had fallen and the wind, while brisk, was not gale-force.

This is the view from my bedroom window this morning. The wind is bizarrely loud. The gusts sound like a semi-trailer grinding up a steep gravel road. In a few minutes Steve and I will suit up again for shoveling, and I will update you on actual conditions. I think they're pretty bad, but I can't tell a thing about accumulation yet.

 

New York City is now under a blizzard warning, and tomorrow's bus back to Portland has been canceled. Yesterday morning, as the weather situation became clear, I did make an early decision to buy a seat on the Wednesday bus, afraid that if I dithered too long I wouldn't be able to get out of town till even later in the week. So I'll be zoom-teaching from Brooklyn on Tuesday, and in the meantime I'll be hunkering down in Gowanus, making spaghetti and meatballs for Stephen and the kids and experiencing the amazement of New York City stopped dead in its tracks.

Yesterday's event for Baron went really well. The room was packed with so many poet friends and acquaintances. Baron's family was there too, and hearing his work in the air through so many different voices was sweet and also intense. Afterward P and I walked for a couple of miles along the Hudson River, basking in the strange mild air, watching dogs and joggers and babies and birds, watching the water ripple past. New York has been wry and beautiful in its gray February cloak.

We stopped in Chelsea to walk through the William Eggleston exhibit at a gallery, then headed back to Brooklyn to meet up with the family for pizza and ice cream. And now an unstructured day unrolls: any plans to be busy in Manhattan have dissolved because of the oncoming storm. Stephen and I will go out for groceries at some point, and then I will cook. And snow will fall and fall.