I know I have faded into the wallpaper lately, but I want to assure you that even in illness I remain incensed at the actions and reactions of our goon-in-chief . . . or perhaps I should say "lack of reaction," as in WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A PRESIDENT STAYS SILENT AFTER A WHITE RACIST SHOOTS TWO INDIAN-AMERICANS BECAUSE "HE THOUGHT THEY WERE IRANIAN"?

Pardon the screaming capital letters, but really. [List of expletives deleted.]

Here we slump in America, languishing under the thumb of bullies and hypocrites. Whitman's poem is breaking my heart.

America 

Walt Whitman 

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

I spent my Sunday walking to the bakery for baguettes and vacuuming the living room and reading War and Peace and falling headfirst into one of those giant rabbit-hole naps that feels like a two-day coma. I hope it will all be salutary.

This morning the big sky is brilliantly clear. The sun is glittering off the few remaining snow patches, and a small wind is kicking up ripples on the bay.

I'd like to do some writing today, if I can get a good chunk of editing done first. I'd like to play the violin. I'd like to walk in the wind. I'd like to stop thinking about my teeth. Maybe it will all come true.

In the meantime, War and Peace has turned out to be exactly the book I need.

I'm sure you're tired of hearing that I'm still sick, so I won't perseverate on that issue, except to shout that progress is being made and my sinuses are a fine-tuned machine.

Yesterday Tom and I went shopping for a futon sofa for his study, so now we have a place to house any friend who cares to contract this virus and/or entertain the cat at 4:30 a.m. If that's you, please don't hesitate to visit. I have plenty of kleenex.

We also took a walk to the fish market and bought the ingredients for the Portuguese seafood stew I raved about here a few weeks ago. I'm happy to say that it was just as delicious this time. Afterward we took a short stroll in the rain, and then we sat on the couch and ate cannoli and watched two episodes of Arrested Development and went to bed before 10 because that's what people do on Saturday night when they're lame.

Today, I suppose I will do housework. Probably I will go for a walk. I will read War and Peace and congratulate myself on reducing my ibuprofen consumption by half. Tooth nerve-pain management is hell. But then again, George Eliot wrote all of her novels with her teeth rotting out of her head. Maybe the next Middlemarch is in my future.

Dense fog this morning. No sign of a sea or a park. The houses on the street are draped in veils. Sky and air are indistinguishable.

I am sitting on the couch drinking black coffee and wondering if I am feeling better.

Last night I made braised farmers'-market duck legs with red wine and prunes, served on a bed of wild rice and brown rice. It was a lovely meal, and not even difficult to produce in the doll kitchen . . . unlike bread, which is just unpleasant. It makes me sad to have lost my bread rhythm.

When I was visiting my parents earlier this week, I found myself wandering around the house, amazed at the roominess. Look at this counter space! Look at this bathroom with a window!

But of course I do have an ocean. And shops with excellent bread. And really good water pressure in the shower.

I never did get started on War and Peace yesterday. Instead, I forced myself to read some political articles in the New Yorker. Maybe today I will be smarter and stick with Napoleonic chaos instead of our own.

I keep meaning to mention that I'll be teaching two workshops this spring. The first will be a half-day session here in Portland, on March 25 . . . a reprise of the essay-writing class I led in Rockland last fall. The second will be an all day poetry-writing and -revision class up north in Trescott, on May 6. I think the Portland class is almost full, but there might be a space or two left in it.

My band is also playing two gigs this month: March 10 at the Squaw Mountain Music Festival in Greenville (with the Mallett Brothers) and March 17 at Pat's in Dover-Foxcroft.

Surely I will not be sick for any of these events. [Sigh.]

Surely Donald Trump will not be elected president. [Wishful revisionist sigh.]

I'm still striving to quell my whatever-it-is virus, but I did manage to edit all day yesterday, deal with a whiny cat, muddle through a non-draining-washing-machine problem, prepare a palatable meal, and go out to a basement bar hidden behind a secret door to watch my friend's daughter's boyfriend do a standup act. So that's something, I guess.

Here in Portland, the temperature is 45 degrees above zero, with a rainstorm in the offing. The sidewalk conditions are sloppy/icy/muddy/thawing. The bay is pale blue. The sunrise is fading into pearl. Two dogs are quarreling over a frisbee.

Today I am going to begin rereading War and Peace for the thirtieth time (or the twentieth? the fortieth? who knows?).

And you might like to read this brief essay, "Artists Dying," by my friend Tom Rayfiel. As I told him, reading it pushed me to recall my own artists-dying experiences, one of which involved the country singer Porter Wagoner inside a white leather suit that seemed to be his only link to life. And of course there was my best friend from college, the actor Jilline Ringle, who, as she was dying of cancer, physically morphed from a glamorous chanteuse into the body of a woman who seemed to be a man dressed up as a glamorous chanteuse . . . a sort of artificial drag queen. Anyway, read Tom's essay and I have no doubt you'll begin to remember your own artists-dying vignettes.

Bargain Shopper

Dawn Potter

I miss you, Jilline, though stuck in this frozen so-called spring

I don’t picture you regretting my grim haunts; you, the girl

Who adored high summer, sporting your cheap slinky cling-

Tight blouses, those cat-eye shades propped in your dyed curls,

Your pink-flowered skirts, and a pair of flapping tacky lamé slides

On your big sore feet. Your beau-idée of taste was a dollar sale

At Marshall’s, the two of us name-dropping Ruskin and Gide,

Stage-whispering, “There’s your boyfriend,” across the gaudy aisles

At first sight of every funny-looker we met: those goat-

Faced circus clowns, those clad-entirely-in-blue albinos—

What freaks wandered this earth! . . . and you, decked out

Like a discount drag queen, lovingly deriding my beige vinyl

Sandals half-mended with bread ties.  Only your puff of frail hair

Mentioned you were dying. The freaks pretended not to stare.

[from Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2014)]

I have returned from my Vermont ordeal, which was an ordeal only because I had a relapse and spent the entire trip on ibuprofen life support. I drove hours and hours, and ate meals, and chatted like a dutiful zombie, but of course everyone could tell I was really the pathetic facsimile of a dutiful zombie. I went to the doctor as soon as I got home, and this morning I am, once again, beginning to rise from the ashes. But geez . . . common cold cannot be the correct term for this viral quicksand. Plus, look at my metaphorical drip: zombies, a phoenix, quicksand. That is surely a sign of serious illness.

Anyway, onward. Perhaps I will be more Hemingway-esque tomorrow.

Whatever you do, avoid catching this so-called cold. I came back from band practice feeling worse, and now this morning I can't tell how I feel . . . maybe the same, maybe better. If I had a doctor in this town and if it weren't Sunday and if I didn't have to drive to Vermont tomorrow to bring the boy back to college, I'd probably call her up and ask for antibiotics. As it stands, however, my choices are hot beverages and positive thinking. So I will declare, "I feel great!" and blame the New York Times for false reporting. That should work.

I've been rereading Aracelis Girmay's stunning poetry collection the black maria, and now I'm about to start Jacques Rancourt's Novena. Jacques was an intern at the Beloit Poetry Journal when I was working there, and I'm so excited about his book. It makes me happy to know he's doing so well, writing so well, getting the attention his work deserves. Sometimes things work out the way they should.

I also want to recommend another book, one that everyone in our doll-house has become enamored with: Ancient Land, Sacred Whale: The Inuit Hunt and Its Rituals by Tom Lowenstein. Last week Paul bought it on a whim at the used book store. He knew nothing about it but wanted to learn more about the Inuit. Turns out that the book is a strange and magical amalgam of poetry and ethnography: a mixture of translations and commentaries centering around the myth and the actualities of the Tikigaq people's annual spring bowhead hunt. The prose is beautiful and evocative and instructional, and it's no wonder that Ted Hughes, of all people, refers to Lowenstein's Tikigaq translations as "works at once of detailed scholarship and high poetic achievement." Reading it is kind of like reading Moby Dick and kind of like reading The Golden Bough and kind of like reading Njal Saga. It's enchanting.