February 2, 2017

A rouse for Brigid the Blessed.

Venus, Mars and the moon lined up last night in the clear sky. People said Uranus was in line behind them, but he could not be seen, at least by me.

Reading fiction submissions for ___ Magazine’s fiction contest. Out of 25 entries read so far, I put one in the “Yes” column for future consideration. Made some “Maybe’s” just so the orange card of “No” wouldn’t predominate so. Lots of mediocre work.  Is this a true indication of what people are doing? Limp. I blame Trump.

Some bad poems in class yesterday, me realizing that my pedagogical technique stops being so fluid when it comes up against the need to say, “No, that’s not it at all.”  After I corrected one poem’s mass of abstract diction, a class member said, “I LIKE the abstract words. I like the fact that it is so–abstract. I like the idea that you can’t really put a meaning on it.”  What needed to be said was, “In the world of the academic, that is one of the very few opinions which is absolutely wrong. always, in every context, and which cannot be countenanced in a serious classroom.” I don’t remember what I did, in fact, say. It wasn’t that.

My body spends its days digesting its own blood and wringing the fluids out of me so I stagger around in a daze and can’t sing more than fifteen minutes without my throat becoming a desert within a desert.  Only anger keeps me moving.

Lilac crocus have been blooming for weeks, recently joined by yellow. DJ says my daffodils at the old house are in bud.

Phone call to J last night. Relief and joy, the sound of his voice just like old times. He was suffering all that time, and hid it from me.