October 28, 2012

Strange light this morning, I suppose of the city lights under fog. It’s dimly clear as dawn, though dawn is two hours off.

Two students from twenty years ago, Scarlett and Bill, take me to lunch. They are both successes, she a lawyer in Greenville, he a teacher in Rhode Island, father, mother. They are still the kids I remember, with more force and less scatter in their personalities. We reminisce. We catch up. Some of their teachers are gone, some dead. one fired for embezzlement, some endure. Both have staked their claim on wide lives, and both do me the honor of not only setting up the lunch, but crediting me with a role in their lives. I eat too heartily and too spicily, and lose the lunch in the holly thicket north of the Renaissance Hotel. Keep the memories.

Brought the potted plants in, though it has not yet frozen or even frosted. The golden trumpets blare seven feet above the ground. Most of my potted plants were orphaned in the studio by Jason, and I think of him when I water them. Filled the winter bird feeders. Took down the hummingbird feeders. Dug up weeds and planted a quincunx of lilies. I do not have luck with lilies, but we’ll see.

Another thought on the literature which my students recognize and I despise: it is the apotheosis of the nano-second attention span. No two thoughts are tied together, and no bundle of thoughts is ever required to form a story or an argument or a complete observation. They are a heap of stones in the desert: some of them are quite striking, but they never make a pyramid. This is not thought of as a deficit, but as the way things are.

One maple in the parking lot behind Starbucks flames in surpassing reds. I thank it every time I pass.