March 26, 2008

Each time I turn on e-mail, the flood of new responsibilities and tasks and necessary responses is like shouldering through the door with two armloads of garbage, keys between the teeth, trying to keep the cats in and getting the door shut before all the heat from escapes into the winter air. Eventually this hourly, fully porous availability will create a new class of electronic hermit, walking blithely past the 100s of new emails and out into their mornings, fancy-free. Maybe I will lead the way.

Mother had been dead for thirty four years. Thirty four years ago it was snowing and bitter in Ithaca. Today is bright as golden glass. It is wrong that we laid her in that bare field with only the geese, sometimes, for company.