February 17, 2016

The household mishap I fear and dread most–the death of the furnace–came to pass last night. I have been taking it with uncharacteristic equanimity. Perhaps something in me divines it won’t be as big a deal as it might be. Perhaps it’s just resignation to the blows. Circe got into the basement and trapped herself in a high place. My shoulders are so inflamed I could scarcely lift her down. Last Thursday I came back to the house and Circe was agitated about something. She cried and cried and would not be comforted. The cleaning ladies had been there that day, and sometimes Maud gets locked in the closet (accidentally) by them. I checked, and that was indeed the problem. Good cat, watching out for her sister.
   
Voted on a new writer for the department yesterday. We all declared ourselves in unity, though by what different paths we came either close to or remained more distant from that point of union! Our choices were rich, so it’s hard to see a way by which we can go really wrong.
   
Working on poems again, after a dry spell of–what?– four days?
   
Read Goethe’s Faust. Thought I had or pretended I had before, but I wish I had taken it fully in. It’s electrifying, magnificent, a whole school for dramatists in itself.
   
Alexa, the voice in my Echo, is really strikingly stupid– but also quite well informed. An autistic machine.