And here I sit beside the window, staring out into the blue-black morning of Monson, Maine. I'm happy to report that the little cold has morphed into an even littler cold, though it could easily have done otherwise. Thus, I am sort of well rested, sort of ready to step into the classroom, and this feels like success.

In a few minutes, the general store will open and I'll step across the street to fetch my coffee and yogurt. Meanwhile, lemony streaks hem the fading night sky; log trucks mutter down the road; the bare tree branches are pencil scratches.

In this stray moment between dawn and day, my thoughts feel drained of color. Yet today's class will be all about details: creating images, tracing images, conjuring up a dense materiality in words. I'm curious to see what my pen will make of this. Nothing, maybe. Or something strange and wonderful.