April 1, 2014

Between classes I opened the accumulated cartons and took out of them and planted hellebore and sanguinaria. There is a backlog of lily bulbs waiting, but I fear it is still too early.

Realize that the humanities war is pointless. We will be digging a hundred holes five feet deep, when the water lies at ten feet, and we will be congratulating ourselves on breadth. This could have been avoided had the new chairman conferred rather than rashly ordained. He is in a position where there will be no going back, except after failure. My certainty faded a little before a lecture he gave yesterday on philosophy which, though thinned out by his own precepts, was brilliant. . . . but brilliant if you already know the entire historical and contextual background, which is what the new plan insists on leaving out. We’ll see what the students think.

Loud crying of birds in the trees between my study and the street.

Tolkien class thrashing through the Silmarillion.

When I came home a mockingbird was in Lawrence’s pool. I ran to save him from drowning, but he had judged rightly that Lawrence’s rocks is less than an inch below water, and he can drink from the great and fishy pool whenever he wants. How does a bird judge these things? Does he account for refraction, for illusions wrought by the water? I imagined fish and bird chatting from their separate worlds.