When we were in Brooklyn, Stephen asked us to take anything we wanted from Ray's bookshelves, so I brought home, among other things, a collection of Ann Beattie's stories, which I've started reading this week. Her abrupt, chopped-off endings and dissociated characters have started to feel like another aspect of winter, or possibly a version of imaginary insomnia. Cozy they are not, though I'm intrigued by them, even excited. Her endings mystify me. How did she decide to make this moment the ending, or this one? I keep flipping back through a story's pages, attempting to track her trajectory, to pin down some hint or metaphor that might lead me to her chosen conclusion or turn, and she keeps eluding me. It's interesting to be so baffled.

Meanwhile, here I am, inside another cold morning in the little northern city by the sea. The furnace growls and the cat sulks and crusty snow glitters under the streetlights. I've got to work on Monson teaching plans today and prep for tomorrow's reading with Julia and figure out how to drive to Carrabassett. I need to finish my judging assignment and simmer chicken stock and drag the recycling bin to the curb. Last night, during our writing group, I brought out a prompt based around myth and naming, and now this morning I feel like one giant myth of myself. Rosy-fingered Dawn may have gone gray, but she's still hurtling through her morning chores, bright lines of laundry fluttering in her wake.