No wonder you rise in the middle of the night.

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


BILLY COLLINS.

Some of its houses spoke.

Some of its houses spoke, by lovely broken woodwork and tiled roofs fistulated with neglect, of a vital tradition of elegance strangled by poverty. There were lilacs everywhere, and some tulips. There was nobody about except some lovely children. From the latticed upper story of one of the houses that were rotting among their lilacs there sounded a woman’s voice, a deep voice that was not the less wise because it was permeated with the knowledge of pleasure, singing a Bosnian song, full of weariness at some beautiful thing not thoroughly achieved. They became credible, all those Oriental stories of men who faced death for the sake of a woman whom they knew only as a voice singing behind a harem window.

REBECCA WEST. BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON.

The possibilities of the life of the body in this world.

"Life is not very interesting," we seem to have decided. "Let its satisfactions be minimal, perfunctory, and fast." We hurry through our meals to go to work and hurry through our work in order to "recreate" ourselves in the evenings and on weekends and vacations. And then we hurry, with the greatest possible speed and noise and violence, through our recreation — for what? … And all this is carried out in a remarkable obliviousness to the causes and effects, the possibilities and the purposes, of the life of the body in this world.



WENDELL BERRY. The Pleasures of Eating.

Turn off the hate. Get out the vote.

Last night, I wandered around my neighborhood eating German chocolate out of my jacket pocket. The fact that the packaging advertised the chocolate as "square" (and "practical") amused me; like billing a great poet as "tall," it seems irrelevant.

I am half in love with everything these days - the crispness of the air, the silvery pink skies that arch over my head as I walk to work every morning, the refreshing unpredictability of my job from one day to the next, the company of my coworkers, snuggling with Bernd as he tries to hypnotize me ("Sarahhhh, look me in the face..." a direct translation from German, I think, but it sounds completely silly in English), friends, fresh local apples and pears from the Co-Op, streets filling up with leaves as the trees empty out.

And half the time, I am pacing, trying to figure this world out. It's an interesting mixture of sweet contentment and squirming, restless discontent.





Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is one of the most engrossing books I've ever encountered.

Milwaukee weekend.

Cutest drunk person EVER. He giggles hysterically when drunk. And his dad is a major alcohol pusher. I have no idea how much beer those two drank Friday night at the Rock Bottom… I had one martini against my will (“This ‘Chocolate Covered Banana’ sounds really great when you say it out loud, but I can’t order this… they forgot a hyphen in the menu!”).

Home, Take Three.

We made a lightning dash to IKEA in Schaumberg yesterday and then Adam helped us assemble our sofa, and my new bookshelf and dresser. The place looks complete… which is... kinda important since Bernd’s dad will be showing up this evening! I’m glad today’s a furlough day for the state—it gave me an opportunity to clean everything up and practice my German.


My project this morning.








World map pillow is from IKEA. I sewed the others.


EVOL.








I can’t resist taking a picture of him every time I make the bed.

It's autumn. I am thinking all the time about the young woman I want to be, and how far I have to go. I think it will be a joyful journey, but along the way, I am running into contradictions.

I am reading hard books and struggling with what they tell me.

I am loving my job. Loving it. It has me rethinking my career goals, that's how much it's shaken me up this week. Mostly, I do research. I know that as soon as I know my territory there I'll want more responsibility. I'll want to be the one who jets off to conferences in Atlanta, Chicago and Vancouver, to listen and learn and share. This week, I am in love. I am paid to care about something WORTH caring about. What more could I ask for, really?

What, why and how.

What bothers you most about adults? Why? How do you want to be similar or different from adults you know when you become an adult?

Last night, we had a visitor with four legs and a long graceful tail, and this visitor examined every nook and cranny, peered behind every door, prowled every horizontal surface, sniffed every shoe, enthusiastically rubbed every cardboard box and outstretched hand.

I think the world can be an awfully mean and lonely place, especially for a stray on a frosty autumn night, and this cat is something we could have helped so easily.