Today will be a workday: Teresa and I are going to do final prep for our upcoming zoom class--a complicated prospect, given that participants will have individual packets of materials, not one common set of sources. But working with Teresa is always fun, so it will be a good morning. Then, after lunch, I'll take my car to the tire shop to get yet another slow leak repaired . . . because what is life without car trouble? I hope I can squeeze in a walk too, or at least time on my mat, though as far as I know we're not going out for dinner tonight. T and I talked about it vaguely a few days ago, but neither of us did anything about reservations, so presumably New Year's Eve will be a regular slow evening at home.

Last night I made vegetable soup with wild mushrooms and farro and a salad of roasted sweet potatoes tossed with diced clementines and lettuce--a wholesome everyday diet after the holiday wallow. Tonight I'll do something or other with Arctic char and maybe roasted kale, and for New Year's I might put together a chicken curry with homemade naan.

Otherwise, what am I up to? Rereading a Le Carre novel, chipping away at a poem revision, doing my housework, trying to get my accounts in order, ducking away from the news hammer, sending little text notes to my kids, petting the cat, folding clean towels, pouring coffee for T, trundling forward in this plain working-class/artist-class life we've woven, trying to glean a few lessons in hope and charity, trying to be honest and dogged and even light-hearted now and again, despite all.

It is the last day of a hard year, in a hard decade, with a hard year on the horizon. Still, the fog over the cove is so beautiful at sunrise, and in its cloudy embrace winter seabirds ride the tide.

Monday has returned . . . the alarm buzzing at 5 a.m., T slipping out the door before 7, and then the sudden all-day quiet of a one-person house.

But for the moment he is still in bed, clanking his coffee cup against his saucer. Outside, deep fog presses against windows and roofs, and the distant foghorns keep up a regular baying. From single digits over Christmas, the temperature has climbed into the 40s, and the air smells like March--salt breeze and wet soil.

Today will be my first day alone for more than a week, and mostly I'll be catching up on housework and emails and phone calls and my exercise regimen, and maybe turning my thoughts toward my upcoming zoom class, maybe toward a poem draft. It was nice to have a mostly lazy weekend, if you can call six loads of laundry lazy, but it will be good to rediscover my briskness and my concentration and to wean myself from the ridiculous foods of Christmas. Last night I stir-fried vegetables and seared tuna; tonight I'll make a wild mushroom and farro soup. I've got the week's menu planned: chicken and seafood and tofu and split peas and many, many vegetables. It's hard to stay brisk on a butter, chocolate, and ham diet.

This gap between Christmas and New Year's is always an odd desert: holiday and not-holiday, especially given that T only gets Wednesday off this week. Maybe a friend will stop by for tea or a walk. Maybe I'll spend all of the days alone. I'd like to think I'll be writing this week. But I might not; I might just wander and read and hum and concoct slow-cooking winter meals.

One set of children is waking up in a train in Indiana. The other set is waking up in their apartment in Brooklyn. And T and I are waking up in our own quiet house in the little northern city by the sea.

I spent yesterday packing up the guest bed, washing sheets, restoring my study, putting away ornaments and lights, and lugging out the crinkly little tree, which had clearly reached the end of its destiny. Christmas trees can tank so suddenly--one day they're festive; the next they're skeletons--and I, also, suddenly, find the mess unbearable and long for tidiness.

So Alcott House returns to its usual winter habits. Fog has settled over the still-dark neighborhood, and in the distance a ship's horn hoots. The cat is curled in his yellow chair, and T sleeps soundly upstairs. It is the last Sunday in December. The old year coils to a close, as the new year sharpens its teeth.

The last few months have been momentous in our family: losing Ray was of course devastating, yet J and H's engagement has somehow magnified the nuclear closeness. All of us have drawn together more intensely, despite geographical distance. It is a great gift to have such children to adore.

I am a person whose emotions are always fizzing and sparking, and because I'm a poet I'm always trying to house those sparks in words. But simple affection is better than rackety talk. Maybe just holding these hands is the best possible way to step into the slavering maw of the next four years. I know that my sons love me. I know that their partners are eager to love me. I know that my own partner loves me. I know that I love them all. Saccharine statements, yes. But it's remarkable how much strength they carry.

I did every speck of driving on this trip and I am tired. Still, I'm glad I was able to let T sidestep responsibility: he's been wrestling with a bad cold all holiday, after working straight through Christmas Eve, so it seemed cruel to ask him to drive as well.

But now we are home, and in a couple of hours the young people will catch a bus for Boston and then embark on the last leg of their trip--the overnight train to Chicago. It's been a delight to be with them for the better part of a week, a delight to know we'll be together again in New York in early January. A few weeks ago I did not have high expectations for Christmas, but J and H are clearly so happy together, and in Vermont that happiness infected everyone.

So after I get them to the bus this morning, I'll wash sheets and towels, fold up the guest bed, reclaim my study, eventually settle into my couch corner and reclaim a little quiet. We have no plans for the weekend, no plans as of yet for New Year's Eve or Day. I'll need to prep for the January zoom class, which I'll be teaching from NYC, and prep for the Monson class that will bump up against it as soon as we return. But none of this is hot-stove: once I get the house reconfigured for two, I can idle a little, and I'm looking forward to that . . . some walks, I hope; some time with Tom, I hope; some time by myself.

This morning, after breakfast with my family, we'll head back to Maine with our young people. It's been a good holiday, cheerful and undemanding, and T and I have felt so lucky to have had this fat chunk of time with our sweet and funny kids. We'll have one more night with them at home, and then they'll be off to Chicago again, and we'll drop back into quiet.

But for the moment here I lie, in this comfortable bed in this old hotel, listening to the traffic swirl around the town center, listening to T sigh in his sleep beside me, listening to the hotel heat spit and creak. 

Night Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike

 

Dawn Potter

The exits flicker past like film stills frozen under a swan

of spotlight. Each green and white message is a lure

and a snare: follow this trail, eat these breadcrumbs,

and you, too, will stumble into the net.

The steering wheel is all that holds you from the edge,

You instruct your hands to cling to ten and two,

feel the tremor of chaos beneath the tires.

Palms sweat, vertigo flickers in knees. A body

understands all too well what it means to 

burst open, to barrel like a poisoned condor

through the jail bars of a guardrail. It expects

this result, it plans for terror, and meanwhile

exits dazzle and vanish, dazzle and vanish,

a spool of missed chances, instantly forgotten.

[from Calendar (Deerbrook Editions, 2024)]

Good morning from the darkness of our surprisingly large room at the Middlebury Inn. Outside the crows are cawing, the pigeons are chirping, the feed trucks and garbage trucks are trundling through the town center, and the town businesses glitter like those miniature buildings that decorate holiday train sets. Vermont under Christmas snow is very postcardy.

Here's an excerpt from my poem "Winter Fragments," the last poem in Calendar. I fear the formatting of the entire piece wouldn't survive the blog's automatic line breaking, but here's the last bit. In the original it appears on the righthand margin--a visual nod to the end of the old year, to the unknown new . . .

Yet in those long-ago winters
The little snowflakes fall very slowly.
The day passes, each hour a veil,
And under the snow’s weight the birches
Bow and loosen their hair.
How does anyone learn to wear flowers?

Essence of sky, upside-down wings.
The snow falls and the birches kneel
Like worried brides, and I turn to you,
Walking beside me, whose eyes look away
Into the fallen snow.

 Happy Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Cold Wednesday Morning . . . this is a brief carol as I need to rush around and get ready to hit the road. But I am thinking of you this morning and hoping that you are where you want to be.

Much love to you all--

Yesterday was a lovely uproar. I made pie crust; then our dear homeland friend Lucy swept in to see the young people and we all went for a long cold chattery walk, stopped in at Norimoto Bakery to buy a scattering of treats, then carted them home and shared them for an extravagant lunch. After Lucy reluctantly went back to work, J and H and I embarked on errands: first, to the fish market, where I discovered that H had never eaten a lobster dinner and was longing to. So of course we bought four lobsters, then stopped for baguettes and wine and scuttled back to the house in time to stoke the wood stove and lounge around it sleepily before T got home from work. Then the four of us went for another cold walk, this time to check out the neighborhood Christmas lights before coming back to open one another's presents before dinner. Finally, we had our a big messy lobster feast, along with garlic bread and a salad of roasted peppers and eggplant . . . such a treat, and so fun to enjoy H's delight.

It's been exceedingly sweet to have this pre-holiday interlude with the kids. They are a delight--funny and fizzy and comfortable and thoughtful . . . 100 percent joy, and so excellent together. I couldn't be happier about their engagement. To think we've now got another delightful young person in our world forever! As Joe says to Pip in Great Expectations, "Wot larks!"

This morning I've got to finish up those pies, then pull myself together so that we can get out of the house quickly tomorrow morning: pack, fill the gas tank, deal with cat stuff, etc. We may or may not be having company for Christmas Eve dinner--maybe our neighbor, maybe another friend from the homeland--so I've planned a chicken fricassee, Abruzzi-style, with cherry tomatoes, rosemary, white wine, and olives, which can be stretched for a crowd if need be. That, alongside an apple pie, should do the trick.

Tomorrow morning we'll hit the road, and the temperature of the holiday will change. But here's hoping we can cling to the euphoric mood of this prequel.

Upstairs, in our room, the bed creaks, then Tom clinks his coffee cup against its saucer. Across the tiny landing the cat sits glowering at my closed study door, where the young people are holed up. Occasionally he yowls ostentatiously and pokes a paw under the door, in hopes that they will invite him in. But no such luck yet.

It is Monday morning and my house is full of bodies, and I am so happy. It's too bad that T has to work both days before Christmas. Employers are such buzzkills, but what can you do? At least I will feed him well when he gets home--for instance, he can have another bowl of that eggnog ice cream. Boy, did that turn out well. It might be the most perfectly textured ice cream I've ever made, and the flavor is heaven. 

Today I need to make a pie crust, and then Lucy, our friend from the homeland, will drop by for a visit, and I ought to run an errand or two, and eventually I'll figure out what we're eating for dinner, but otherwise I am dedicated to doing nothing but hanging out.

Weirdly, though, the public poetry train keeps plowing ahead. Yesterday Tina Cane posted a video of me on her "Poetry Is Bread" reading series. In the evening I got notice that two of my new poems are out in the Maine Arts Journal (alongside poems by my friend Marita O'Neill). I thought I'd just be washing floors yesterday, but the words said otherwise.

Today the young people arrive! Their flight from Chicago will get into Boston in the early afternoon, then the easy bus to Portland will bring them into town before dark and the holidays will begin. The cat is already electric with excitement. Ruckus is a fiend for parties, and he adores his young people. He knows something's up as soon as I start setting up the guest bed, and he cannot wait for the fun to start.

My jobs today center around cleaning bathrooms and the downstairs floors and making eggnog ice cream. As you may know (the recipe is floating around somewhere on this blog), I have honed over the years a particularly delicious version of homemade eggnog, and this year I am going to use that recipe as the base for a batch of ice cream. Thus I need to make the nog early in the day so it can be well chilled before I embark on step 2.

Otherwise, I haven't done any fancy planning for meals. Tonight I'll fry up some hake and make a roasted Brussel sprout salad and maybe a batch of biscuits. For the other days I figure the kids and I will have the fun of deciding together what we want to eat: everyone in this family is a cook and a lover of food. We'll be heading to Vermont on Christmas Day, so the big dinner is out of our hands anyway. We will just play with the small ones.

Yesterday the glass dude showed up to replace my windshield, and then I waded into the ridiculous arena that is pre-Christmas grocery shopping. It was a scene, but I persevered, and now today I will comfortably drive nowhere other than the bus station. Our young people are coming! The only thing better would be if the Brooklyn young people were coming as well, but that set is far away in Oklahoma, where they are performing different family duties. As well they should, the dear ones. They are all so family-oriented, these young people. It is touching, how devoted they are.

I am still a-flutter about my big day of public poem stuff, but the holidays are bringing me back to earth. It is not my job to be a poet at Christmas. It is my job to be a mother and a daughter and a sister. Picture me on my knees scrubbing toilets. Picture me bent over a wet mop. The poet vanishes slowly, like the Cheshire Cat: smile last to go.

Remember, a few days ago, when I was moping about book reviews and my bad marketing stamina and generally behaving all woe-is-me? Well, this morning I am here to humbly apologize for being such a goon.

If anyone were to make a B-level Hallmark Christmas movie about the happy endings of poets, they could borrow some plot ideas from me. Because yesterday, I for some reason clicked the Instagram icon on my laptop. I rarely post anything on Instagram and hardly ever even look at it, so I don't know what I was up to there, but in any case I floated onto the site and saw that I had a notification. Eh, someone wants me to friend their cute dog's page, I thought. But I clicked on the notification anyway, and when I did I discovered I'd been awarded a prize: Scoundrel Time's 2024 Editors' Choice Award in Poetry. Huh? To add to the confusing hilarity, I learned that my good friend, the novelist Tom Rayfiel, had been been awarded the nonfiction award, so of course I immediately emailed him and repeated Huh? and he promptly wrote back pretending that we would soon be swanning around at an imaginary gala in crushed velvet, so that was a fine, if startling, entry into the day.

And then, in the afternoon, I got an email from the poet Rebekah Wolman telling me she'd just published a review of Calendar . . . and what a review! . . . long, and detailed, and thoughtful, and generous. I am, as I told my friend Gretchen, gobsmacked. I feel like a cat after a nice long brushing: electric and purring and wild-eyed. I mean, what the heck? This kind of stuff never happens. Winning a prize that I didn't even apply for? Receiving such a dense and careful book review? This is Christmas right here, friends.

Anyway, I am sorry you had to listen to me groan last week, and I'd like to swear it will never happen again, but of course I am human, so it will. I tender my regrets in advance, and give you permission to slap me around a little (via rhymed couplets only, please) if I get out of hand again.

* * *

Okay, now that the mea culpas are out of the way, let's talk about Christmas decorating. Christmas is basically a display of seasonal kitsch. I am a person who dislikes clutter and cutesy, so my approach to the season always strikes me as comic, because in December I am wholeheartedly devoted to sentimental knickknackery. Awkward little-boy-made ornaments, a rubber King Kong, strange styrofoam gingerbread men, a newspaper cut-out of Elvis, the nativity set my great-aunt Rose made in her ceramics class . . . all take pride of place. In about a week, the onslaught of stuff will be driving me nuts and I'll be desperate to pack it up again, but for the moment I am awash in delight with the silliness. Tomorrow our young people arrive, and so I am scrubbing candlesticks, assembling the candle chimes, setting votives in the windows. I'm not sure how my mind is working here: maybe This place needs to look like it's on fire is a form of parental affection. Whatever the case, I am having fun laughing at Christmas, and maybe you are too.

For whatever reason, my writing group was especially fun last night. Everyone was in a party spirit, our dear Betsy had recovered well enough from her concussion to take part, and people were writing like fiends. Everyone's draft felt like a marvel. It was thrilling to listen to them, thrilling even to read my own.

I brought along a prompt based on the Swift poem I posted in the comments a few days ago. What that means is that the conversations I've been having with Teresa are now bleeding into the conversations I'm having with the Portland poets . . . i.e., my inner life is swirling beyond my thoughts into chatter and experiment, which is exciting. Poetry as social currency is a dry way to put it, but what I mean is that art-as-public-life doesn't need to have anything to do with publication or performance but may simply be "Hey, pals! The eighteenth century is talking to us!"

This reminds me: a couple of days ago the folksinger Dave Mallett suddenly died. Dave was a thorough Mainer, born in Piscataquis County and living most of his life there, but he was also a legend in the folk world--most famously for writing "The Garden Song" ("inch by inch, row by row . . . "), which Pete Seeger made legendary. He performed widely, and his children also became traveling musicians. (His sons are the Mallett Brothers Band, an alt-rock band with a wide New England following.) In the days when I lived in the homeland, I'd run into Dave often in the grocery store. We'd chat a bit; sometimes he'd appear at the shows I played with Doughty Hill. He was a presence--someone who had managed to become a national figure in his chosen medium while remaining a regular local guy.

I've been thinking of him this week. "How rare that is, to be both local and extremely serious," I started saying to myself, and then I thought, "Maybe not so rare." Alan Bray, who teaches the visual arts arm of the Monson high school program I lead: he's another one of that ilk--trained in Italy, selling his paintings in NYC, but never leaving home. Then there's my friend Steve Cayard, a nationally renowned birchbark canoe builder, tucked into his quiet shop in the woods. What I'm saying, I guess, is that art-as-public-life can be as simple as sitting around a dinner table talking about the grove where you harvested spruce roots for sewing birchbark or which local hayfield is most beautiful under the setting sun.

***

Speaking of art in the homeland--

Soon Monson Arts will be opening registration for the 2025 Conference on Poetry and Learning, and I'll be able to announce our guest faculty and talk about a few of the adventures that Teresa and I are planning for that week. Last year's conference was a real eye-opener for me, in lots of personal ways. But amazingly it also turned out to be a boon for Monson Arts . . . which is to say, our classes filled and we netted a small profit. Meanwhile, we've also made the decision to strictly limit class numbers to 15 people, which means that we will maintain the intimacy of the experience but will never be a giant moneymaker.

For those who are new to this blog: the Conference for Poetry and Learning (which I direct) is dedicated to helping teachers and other community builders bring poetry into their workplaces, into conversation with other art forms, and into the daily civil discourse this nation so desperately needs. Many of the conference participants have institutional support: that is, some or all of their tuition comes from school professional development funds. But others work in poor schools or outside of institutions altogether. Last year we gathered together enough scholarship money to bring in several people who would not otherwise have been able to attend, and I hope that will again be the case this year.

And as you know, I'm also devoted to Monson's high school studio art program, which allows a cohort of rural students to spend an entire school year focusing closely on their writing or visual art. That program depends on outside support to survive. So here, too, we would welcome anything you could toss into the pot to make sure that these kids, many from poor isolated northern communities, continue to have the opportunity to live in the world of art.

The Monson Arts donation button allows you to choose where you'd like to allocate your gift. If you're able to help us keep these programs going, all of us at Monson would be endlessly grateful.

Alarm didn't go off this morning, so we are floundering, elephantine, around the house trying to pretend we remember all of the steps to the get-Tom-off-to-work dance. But I did manage to make coffee, and now I am sitting here in my couch corner attempting to become awake.

I spent much of yesterday with my friend Betsy, who's recovering from a concussion and is highly bored by not being able to read, write, or even watch convalescent TV. We went for a long walk, and then we ate lunch at her place, and we talked nonstop, so I am hoping that at least I made her tired enough for a nap. Otherwise I had a pretty quiet day.

But what would a day be without car trouble? Would it be any day at all? On Wednesday, as I was coming back from Monson, a truck kicked a stone into my windshield, and the ding, which I considered ignoring, has turned into an expanding crack, which I cannot ignore, and so there goes another $400 into the pockets of the car guys (a cost that neatly slips under the insurance deductible, of course). Meanwhile, T's truck is still in the shop: we have yet to learn what that astronomical fee will be. [Cue teeth gnashing here.]

Well, at least I don't have to go anywhere. Tom can borrow my wounded car, and I can stay home and dust the shelves and polish the dining room table and work on my poem and read a sad novel and walk to the store. It would be nice to never need two cars again. Those days are not here yet, but maybe someday.

I did end up teaching yesterday; and though the day was shortened by the ice delay, most of the kids actually appeared, so that was a relief. We worked on self-portraits--via description, voice, favorite song, and ode--and it was such a pleasure to watch them burrow into their thoughts. Kids are so great.

Now here I am, home again, with three weeks of unemployment unrolling before me. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to have vacation and a paycheck. Still, I treasure these cycles of off-time, even if they are financially dicey.

Mostly I'm ready for the holiday. This week I'll shine up the house for company, and before long I'll be hanging out with my Chicago kids and completing my baking assignments for Christmas dinner. But otherwise my time is my own: no teaching, no editing . . . just reading and writing and walking. And traveling, of course: there are trips to Vermont and NYC to throw into the mix, and I'll be teaching while I'm in New York, which will be challenging--not to mention we'll be staying in Ray's apartment, so it will be emotionally draining as well. But that's a few weeks away. I don't need to focus on it yet.

I've started rereading Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, one of the great novels of World War II London. I've written about this novel before: it is strange and difficult, and I love it deeply, but it is one of the saddest stories I know. I wonder if sad is a good choice, and I wonder what good means and also choice. Sometimes the books seem to fall off the shelf into my hands. Read me now. I am at their mercy.

Apparently last night it snowed up here in the homeland, and now it is pouring rain, and I slept through the whole thing so was confused when an email flashed on my phone: school delays, huh, wha? It looks like at least half of the schools that feed into Monson Arts have one-hour delays because of icing, so I guess my class will not be getting started quickly this morning, if at all.

Thus, here I shelter in bed, listening to trucks rumble past in the slush and considering the sad fact that the store doesn't open for another hour so I can't acquire any coffee till then. In the upstairs apartment someone's talk radio swoops and yawps, then suddenly falls silent. It feels odd to be in this place for work purposes and now suddenly have my day hip-checked. I can't decide if this is restful or a pain. I mean, I want to love a snow day. Doesn't everyone? But what about a snow day when I'm far from home in a coffee-less apartment and might not get paid, even though I drove all the way up here with a sheaf full of teaching plans? Kind of takes the shine off the situation.

Monday, and another chilly morning in the little northern city by the sea.

Unlike Saturday, which was sheer laziness, yesterday was productive, in a housekeeper sort of way. I plowed through a giant laundry project, extending even to washing the bed pillows. I scrubbed the bathroom walls and ceiling. I did the grocery shopping and I made a ragu and I watered my houseplants. It was a prosaic day, but a useful one.

This morning I'll go for a walk with friends, then finish the week's vacuuming before embarking on my final work trip before Christmas. The weather looks decent, and I'm not afraid of my car (for the moment, anyway), so it should be an easy-enough journey north.

Once I get back, I suppose I should try to restart my book promotion. The events of the fall pretty much kneecapped me in that regard. I'd been hoping for a few more reviews, and maybe they'll still appear, but I can't afford to send out any more free copies in hopes that someone will decide to write one. It's a conundrum. I do have an interview scheduled for early February and a few more readings in the works. If you have other ideas, let me know.

In the meantime I just keep writing more poems. I am the faucet that won't stop dripping.

Another cold dark morning, and I had the good fortune to sleep until 6:30, so I am feeling holidayish, sitting here in front of my little lopsided Christmas tree as the furnace mutters and the coffee steams. Now the cat shoots in from outside and starts loudly crunching his chow. He may be twelve years old, but he is full of pep, having dumped over the tree twice this season as well as a glass of red wine. He is swaggering around the place like a petty dictator . . . the king of Maine, as my future daughter-in-law likes to coo at him, despot of all he surveys.

Tomorrow I'll be on the road again, heading north for my final Monson class of the calendar year. So today I'll do a bit of housework--clean bathrooms, wash sheets and towels, maybe catch up on the dusting. I want to put together a ragu, a slow-cooked Italian meat sauce that I'll eventually ladle over bucatini. I might watch some football late in the day. I want to take a walk, and I want to read. Miraculously I have finished all of my Christmas shopping, wrapping, and mailing, so my only prep will center around slowly getting ready for the kids, who will arrive next Sunday. Given how much I usually dread these weeks (oh, how I hate the shop-and-glop), we're in pretty good shape. And the young people are coming! That makes everything shine.

Yesterday afternoon T and I drove into town for a couple of beers and a shared bowl of poutine, then came home and watched a dreadful Barbara Stanwyck flick (Ladies of Leisure, an early Frank Capra film with a beastly romantic hero who makes the girl fall in love with him by deriding her as a cheap floozy) and ate bibimbap, which I'd never made before and now will make all of the time--such a good recipe, with bits of various vegetables (thinly sliced sweet potatoes, kale and wild mushrooms from my freezer, slivers of red onion), all roasted on a sheet pan and served in big bowls with oven-baked rice and eggs and spiced with gochujang, kimchi, and sesame oil.

I also spent time scratching away at my current poem draft, which is beginning to assume a more definite shape. It's arisen from the notion of disappearance, the prompt word that Teresa, Jeannie, and I gave ourselves during last week's zoom confab. This will be our third round of collaborative prompting: the first two words were edge/archway and ledge, and the results were surprising. The words themselves are vague and open-ended, and we don't consult with one another as we write, yet the echoes within the results have been notable. I'm not sure what will eventually happen with these pieces, but I know we are beginning to imagine some sort of collaborative collection or performance. It's exciting.

It's winter this morning in the little northern city by the sea: 15 degrees with an Arctic breeze, and the cat is appalled. Thank goodness for cozy Alcott House, where the furnace growls and the lamps glitter and the coffee is hot. A beautiful unstructured Saturday looms. There's not one single demand on my calendar, and I'm still feeling fizzy from yesterday's poet conversations.

In the morning I hung out with Betsy and we mused about syntax and grief; in the afternoon Teresa and I also mused over syntax, this time in relation to our surprised pleasure in revisiting the poems of Pope and Swift. As I said to Tom in the evening, in Harmony I never spent the bulk of any day socializing via conversations about syntax. I never talked to anyone about syntax. What is this undiscovered world?

Teresa and I have been trying to prepare ourselves for a deep dive into Lyrical Ballads, the original published version of Wordsworth and Coleridge's collaborative collection. But first we wanted to revisit the eighteenth-century poets, and now we're feeling that we need to embark on a side trip into the proto-romantics Cowper and Southey. It's taking us a very long time to get going on this project, but I have to say that Swift and Pope delighted us--a thrill for me, as I remember slogging through Pope in high school and thinking that I might have to poke out my eyes with pencils. I love to be wrong.

Swift, though, I've always adored. As I said to Teresa, his poems are a straight arrow into the novels of Dickens: cluttered comedic observations of London life, nearly cinematic in their sensory clarity. They are a joy. And now it turns out that Pope is clear, intelligent, witty, and precise--as a critic much more interesting to me than, say T. S. Eliot. What a discovery! Who knows: maybe Cowper and Southey will be wonderful too. I can only hope.

So I had an exciting day, lit up by conversations with two of the finest poets I know, diving into the poetry of the past in ways that made the past feel muscular and alive. Betsy and I wandered along the river-edges of Dante and Milton. Teresa and I couldn't stop talking about the prosaic old rhymed couplet--how Swift and Pope unreeled the form so immaculately, so uniquely, each to such different purpose.

For me, these kinds of conversations are a love language. I don't know how else to put it. I come away from them feeling like my heart has cracked open. I get overwrought: I pace around the house: I want to slip Valentines under my friends' doors; I want to sketch little pictures of them in the margins of my notebook.

And still to come this winter: reading Lear with my younger son. So much to look forward to.

Take that, horrible incoming president and your pack of hyenas. We read the hard books over here. We read them, and we talk about them, and then we read more. You fuckers. Just try to stop us.

Yesterday afternoon I took a small side path into cooking--baking a batch of chocolate crinkles, putting together a beet salad--but that was just a blip. The bulk of my hours were spent reading and writing: a marathon day, devoted to words. I wrestled with my long poem, I finished rereading The Years, I studied a short story I admire to try to figure out why it works so well, and then in the evening I went out to write with my friends. Of course I also accomplished a few pedestrian things, like laundry and dishes, and I did go for a walk and I did help Tom get his truck back from the mechanic. But words were the feature of the day, and I tried to make my hours count.

Today won't be quite as focused as I have errands to run, but I will still carve out some morning hours for myself, and then in the afternoon Teresa and I will chatter on the phone about Swift, Pope, Johnson, and the poets who swam in their wake. I'm quite looking forward to what she has to say because I enjoyed rereading those 18th-century guys far more than I expected to.

Swirling in the world of letters . . . pacing the floors of the Alcott House, alone with my bookshelves and my notebooks, new lines unrolling under my fingers. What a dreamy few days I've had.

Yesterday's weather was truly nasty, and I spent too much time driving around in it, mostly because T has to borrow my car today so I needed to get my errands done while I could. As a result, grocery shopping in a nor'easter. Ick.

Thus my house felt particularly pleasant after a morning spent wrestling with ice and sluice and gale and grocery bags. I simmered minestrone, I made strides on a new poem draft, I read Virginia Woolf beside a wood fire, and meanwhile the roof creaked in the wind and rain dashed against the panes. I'm guessing a few trees came down around town last night. It was a wild storm.

But all is quiet this morning, and I have a peaceful day ahead of me. There's nothing on my calendar except my writing group tonight. I hope to keep working on the poem draft, make a batch of Christmas cookies, go for a long walk now that the ice and slush have washed away, discover another novel to read.

My editing hiatus arrived just at the right time--not for my financial well-being, of course; but given the uproars of November, these few loose days have been a kind of cloaking device: a cover for convalescence disguised as idleness, thought disguised as blankness, work disguised as self-indulgence. My long slow hours, mostly spent alone in these rooms, have been both medicinal and expansive. There's been no television or radio chatter, nothing to erode my inner concentration, nothing but the click and shift of house and body. And now I am writing what may be a long poem. I am reading The Years, one of the great books of my heart. I am living inside an ebb and flow of thought and feeling, that mysterious tidal sensation of making.

[And I think over again]

 

anonymous Inuit poet, translator unknown

 

And I think over again,
my small adventures,
when with a shore wind I drifted out
in my canoe,
and thought I was in danger—
my fears,
those I thought so big,
for all the vital things
I had to get to and reach.

And yet, there is only one thing,
one great thing—
to live to see in huts and on journeys
the great day that dawns,
and the light that fills the world.

Freezing drizzle this morning; high-wind warning for the afternoon: I like most weather, but this sort just seems mean. Poor T didn't get home till 9:30 last night, so he's already tired, and now he has to wake up and drive in this. Ugh.

After work yesterday he went straight to the gallery and spent the evening installing display panels for his photo collective's giant annual auction. So I had a long day by myself. I shoveled snow, worked on class plans, read Swift, Pope, and Johnson. I mailed Christmas boxes. I made jam-filled cookies and read Virginia Woolf. I lolled by the fire and ate a baked potato and a leftover piece of chicken and watched North by Northwest. I baked an extra potato, just in case nobody bothered to feed Tom at the gallery, and when he came home unfed, I was very happy to produce it, along with more leftover chicken, and set him up with a hot dinner, a couch blanket, and a cold beer. I may not be able to improve the weather, but at least I can coddle.

This morning I am going out to meet a new person, a mandolin player. I'm not exactly nervous, but I am prepared for failure. Not everyone can endure my playing style; traditional bluegrass musicians can be particularly unbending about it. They think I'm too highfalutin. So we'll see what transpires: maybe nothing, but maybe something. I am prepared for anything.

In the interstices I'll work on class plans, finish the Woolf novel, get onto my mat, make minestrone, haul firewood, work on a poem, fold laundry, take a walk if the streets aren't too icy, maybe make another batch of Christmas cookies, return a library book, pick up a few groceries, stare out the window, wince at the news and then try to focus ever harder on my own work, which is what? . . . cooking? being an affectionate partner? messing around with words? In the air they sound thin and unimportant, but they're all I've got.

Yesterday's visit to the doctor was ridiculously slow (I read a whole lot of Woolf's The Years while waiting in that office), but in the end it turned out to be uplifting. I appear to be in surprisingly good shape, and I got the good news that I'm continuing to slowly but steadily lose weight. (I don't own a scale, so the annual weight reveal is always a mystery to me.) Turns out my only obvious problem was a giant lump of ear wax.

Good health can be dumb luck, and I acknowledge my dumbness in that regard. I am no paragon of fitness or diet. I'm just accidentally fond of walking and vegetables. But it seems that hauling firewood and heavy wet laundry and the stupid vacuum cleaner is lifting weights, that gardening is core work and yoga, and I guess everything adds up. The small steps I've taken to drop pounds have been small steps indeed, but for some reason they are working. The dumbness of luck is hard to explain. And of course one of these days that luck will run out.

But it hasn't yet. So as the year of my 60th birthday draws to a close, I acknowledge my affection for this dogged body. She's hanging in, despite gray hair and sagging skin and sore feet and Coke-bottle glasses. She still runs up and down the stairs without thinking too much about it. She still dances around the kitchen. She still climbs a mountain now and again. Yes, she huffs and puffs and takes a lot of breaks. But she still manages to get to the top. I'm kind of proud of her.

With the extremely minor exception of my football team losing its game, the weekend shook out just as I'd hoped it would, and I woke up this morning rested and calm and ready. It should be a fairly quiet week. I've got a doctor's appointment this morning and various errands to run afterward. I'll need to work on teaching plans, and I have to catch up on my Pope-Swift-Johnson homework so that Teresa and I can talk about it on Friday. On Wednesday I'm meeting a mandolin player to try out the possibility of playing music together. Maybe it will work, maybe not. I'm no fiddler, but something interesting might happen anyway.

A couple of days ago Tom not quite but sort of seriously suggested we join a bowling league. I'm a terrible bowler, so you know he's grasping at straws here, but I take his point. We could use some goofiness. Playing music in an unfamiliar setting isn't exactly goofiness, but it's a chance to experience something I haven't had access to since I moved to Portland: a circle of sound. I've been lonely for it.

I woke up to Portland's first snow of the season--beautiful thick flakes and they're sticking fast. We aren't forecast to get much accumulation, but already grass and roofs are covered, and first daylight light exudes an eerie phosphorescence, pallid and cool, sky as elegant gaze.

In celebration, I lit a fire in the wood stove, and now here I sit in winter Eden--Sunday morning, no place to go, snow falling, flames dancing, hot coffee in my cup, a Virginia Woolf novel in my lap.

To add to the pleasure, I stayed in bed till almost 7--partly because I went to sleep a little late (we spent the evening at a dance concert at Bowdoin), partly because I was lolling in our crisp new sheets, partly because these days my body adores unconsciousness, partly because for some reason the cat decided not to torment me into getting up.

Snow--such a glorious phenomenon. How lucky we are, here in the north, to live in its embrace. Yes, it snarls travel and exhausts shovelers and rapidly disintegrates into dirty gray lumps. Yet what could be lovelier than a snowstorm? . . . white air whirling, everyday earth magicked into radiance. Gratefulness for home overwhelms me during a snowstorm: roof, windows, and firebox; lamps and cookstove; how fortunate to be here, looking out and looking in. And soon another eagerness will arise--the eagerness to rush out into it, lift my face into the falling flakes, scuffle my boots in the fluff, turn to peer back at my little cottage, poignant and unfamiliar in its new landscape.

And it's only 8 a.m. A whole day lies ahead. I might bake bread. I'll likely clean bathrooms. I'll wrap a few gifts. I'll water houseplants. I'll think of something to make for dinner. I might watch the Bills play, if the so-called TV antennae decides to do its job. I'll read my Woolf novel, and I will not do any paying work, and I will not worry about not writing, and I'll go for a walk in the snow, and I'll lug firewood, and drink many mugs of tea, and play cards with Tom. December. Sunday. Snow. Home. 

Coffee tastes really, really good this morning. That's one thing about drinking so little coffee these days: my delight in my small cup has increased exponentially. I enjoy it so. And on Saturdays I get two small cups! 

There's nothing extraordinary about how I make coffee--just freshly ground beans poured into a French press--and I drink it black. It's the plainest of beverages. Still, it can feel like an elixir--not because of the caffeine jolt, which for me is minimal. I think the magic arises from an olio of fragrance, bitterness, warmth, and ritual.

I detest ice coffee. Occasionally, when I'm out, I'll drink a cappuccino, but mostly I'm not too interested in coffee as lusciousness. I like the starkness of black coffee, the bite, the lack of fussiness. Heat of a rounded cup in my hands. Click of cup against saucer. The privacy of the moment . . . the only body awake in the house, breathing into steam and scent. The friendliness . . . carrying a hot cup upstairs to set beside drowsy Tom.

Last night we walked up to the new local barbecue place with our neighbor. The restaurant was packed with families and couples; we were glad to see such a buzz since the previous occupant (another barbecue joint) had been a dud. Portland overflows with great restaurants, but most are on the peninsula (the busy part of the city: downtown, Bayside, the East and West ends, the waterfront). Our neighborhood, Deering Center, is city-residential--not suburban but not densely urban either: houses close together but most with small yards; a mix of single- and multi-family structures, sidewalks and schools and big trees--walkable, busy, people of many ages. It's a low-key Mainer version of old-timey Brooklyn, yet oddly there are not quite enough interesting places to go out to eat, given that it's got a population that's definitely ready to do so. Thus, it was pleasant to walk around in the cold for a while, talking of this and that; then tuck ourselves into a cheerful, crowded room and eat brisket and drink beer and overhear a hundred other neighbors also being jovial.

I've decided that this weekend is going to be my turning point: I am going to figure out a way to cheer up, and so far I'm doing well in that regard. Brisket! Followed by good sleep! Followed by the best coffee! Yesterday I did a little holiday shopping and managed not to torment myself too much. I bought a set of good-quality sheets for our bed--Merry Christmas to us. I drove a car that didn't make any strange noises at all. I listened to one of Ray's mix CDs as I drove and I cried in a happy way. In the afternoon I talked hard with Teresa and Jeannie about the poem-writing project we've embarked on. Look how well things are going! Look how many exclamation points have shown up in this letter . . . well, perhaps that's the coffee talking, but try to take it as hope and good intentions.

I did not want to wake up this morning. The alarm was a shock: I could easily have stayed in bed another hour, maybe more. I don't know why I'm so sleepy these days; I suppose it's a continuing body reaction to general stress and sadness, but my bed seems like the nicest place on earth.

However, I did my duty. I got up and made coffee and let the cat out, and now here I sit, slowly beginning to ungroggify.

It's Friday: recycling day, errand-running day, poetry-talk-with-Teresa-and-Jeannie day, going-out-to-the-new-barbecue-place-with-our-neighbor day . . . certainly plenty of things I am glad to be awake for. My car is not one of those bright spots, however. Yesterday I paid yet another hefty repair bill--this time, for a wheel bearing--and afterward John at the garage solemnly wished me happy holidays and said he hoped he would not be seeing me again soon. You and me both, pal. Cheaper than a new car, cheaper than a new car. But the mantra doesn't help much, especially now that T's pickup has also entered repair hell. We are in the grip of two aging vehicles, neither of which we can afford to replace. It's not a soothing situation.

Anyway, for the moment, my car has limped back onto the road. So this morning she and I will venture out to do some mild Christmas shopping, and then I will talk about poems with my friends. On paper it sounds like an undemanding day.

Still, last night, when I went out to write with friends, I suddenly got overloaded, suddenly had the feeling that I really just ought to go home. That's been happening to me lately, in a variety of friendly situations--again, a normal reaction, though I wish it wouldn't. I know that I'm still sad. I feel dull in public because I'm still sad. It's boring for everyone else to keep being around someone who is sad about the death of a person they didn't know, whose relationship to me doesn't have a clear label: not like the death of a direct family member . . . everyone would understand that.

But I did see an excellent happy movie on Wednesday! It's not like I'm straight-up miserable. Just melancholy, in a fitful way. I'm living alongside, sometimes inside, the drip of slow grief. There's nothing wrong with sadness, no shame in saying What is this new world, without you?

Home, and traveling nowhere for the next two weeks. Home, with no editing project hissing on the burner, and no housecleaning today because I already did that earlier in the week, and walking out to the library to pick up a new novel to read, and baking something or other, and going out to write tonight with my friends, and also, admittedly, driving the car to the garage to find out what-the-hell with the continuing loud noise, but at least I am home and not stranded on an unfrequented route in the wilds of the central Maine forest.

On Tuesday my friend said, "You look tired," and my response was "I am always tired"--for the past month everything has been exhausting, whether or not I've been sleeping solidly. But last night, after T and I came home from the movies, I realized that I suddenly felt light and joyous again. We'd gone to see It Happened One Night, a hilarious pre-code flick starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, much of it set in 1930s Greyhound buses and motels, and it was just so goofy and sweet, and the crowd gathered around us in the dark was so happy to be watching it, and T and I were cuddled together on a couch, also so happy, and afterward, as we drove home through the rain, with the city Christmas lights puddling in the wet reflections of the windshield, I was giddy with pleasure . . . thank goodness for the small joys--a happy movie, a wet night, a warm hand in mine.

It's cold in Wellington, with snow expected here tonight, but fortunately I should be able to slip home before the weather starts. At the moment, though, I am still in bed, recovering from an unpleasant teaching dream in which a crowd of "experts" invaded my class while I haplessly fumed and the students sat bewildered. I feel like I've had an abnormal number of teaching-anxiety dreams lately, which is interesting and also annoying because in real life I'm not really that anxious about teaching so I find it unfair that my brain wants to dig up one more way to make me worry. Surely my conscious brain does that well enough on its own.

Still, maybe my brain needs some tough love because it seems to be having trouble remembering how to pack: I almost forgot my toothbrush yesterday, and I definitely forgot my notebook. I'm not sure why I'm so scattered: just chalk it up to the overwhelmingness of the season, I guess. At least I remembered my coat.

Yesterday I finished an editing project, finished working on a friend's manuscript, finished my weekly house chores. Thus, even though I have to head north this afternoon, I will return tomorrow to a mostly clean plate, and one that will stay mostly clean till after the new year.

I don't know if that's good. Since my essay explosion, I haven't written much worth saving, so maybe I would be better off just plowing forward into paying jobs. Still, I can't help but be happy to have a bubble of open time ahead of me. Of course much of it will clog up with Christmas obligations. But some of it won't. Some of it will be mine.

This morning I'll go for a walk with a friend, then do a tiny bit of copyediting for another friend, then head to Wellington to spend the night with still other friends before ending up in Monson tomorrow morning. A friend-filled day: a refreshment.

Our little fat crooked Christmas tree glows in its corner; a few select ornaments perch on mantle and shelves. I am not a fiendish holiday decorator but I am sentimental about the King Kong that Tom bought for me at the top of the Empire State Building, about the paper houses he taught our little boys to make, about the weird styrofoam gingerbread men that my parents bought from the Five 'n Dime in 1962 for their first Christmas together. Every year I'm glad to visit with them again.

I've almost forgotten about holiday baking. No time for Emily Dickinson's black cake this year: Ray's death scuttled that. But maybe I can turn out a few batches of cookies. We'll see if I want to. I refuse to feel obliged.

I set up our little tree yesterday and, by late afternoon, did manage to get lights onto it, though no ornaments yet. Still, even in half-baked splendor it's a cheerful sight in the living room corner. Nothing says early December like tree lights, a wood fire, and the fragrance of slow-cooking stew. 

Today I'll return to editing, then finish up the housework and fill in around the edges with this-and-that obligations. I'll get onto my mat, get outside for a walk, read my book, be plain and unspectacular, be dreamy and inefficient, be whatever happens.

The hours unroll. Juncos skip and peck among the fallen leaves. Far above them a posse of gulls wheels in the restless sky. 

We got home a little after 2 p.m. yesterday. So, after assuaging the cat, we went for a fast walk in the cold air, rediscovering muscles and lungs after days of sitting and rich food, before hunkering down with our books by the newly lit wood stove.

Not a flake of snow in Portland but it's cold: a scarf day, a house day. Today I need to catch up with laundry and housework and groceries, reacquaint myself with routine before pouring myself into next week's duties. Already the washing machine is churning; already I'm trying to remember what's in the freezer, what's on the list, what needs to be scrubbed and soaped.

But for a few more minutes I can sit here quietly with my coffee. I'm almost finished with Nabokov's Pale Fire, looking forward to starting the used novel I picked up in Amherst on Friday: Edmund White's Hotel de Dream. I'll rummage mildly among my household tasks, make a stew, maybe, or a ragu--something fragrant and slow. I'll clean bathrooms and wash sheets and read my books and go for another walk, and maybe after dinner I'll look at the Bills game before I fall asleep.

The little house is an embrace . . . tiny rooms and shabby furniture, Tom's bright photos on the walls, dried garden flowers on the mantle, woodbox piled high, the small and glossy kitchen; upstairs, our desks, our bed, a swish of wind in the eaves.