A few announcements, and an elegy.

A few announcements.

1. I am so. far. behind. I want to cry.

2. I am, in a perhaps not unrelated development, sick.

3. There are certain themes in my life:

• too many magazines accumulate beside my bed
• I need to reduce the amount of clothes, shoes, etc. by one-third
• I screen out the same callers on my caller ID (SLVFA, Stage Attractions, Banker's Life, Deluxe Carpet Cleaners, &c. & c.) pretty much every day

--but I am not sure if the magazines, extra 33 1/3 % clothes/shoes, recurrent callers are an enlightened boddhisatva, sent to me to teach me a lesson, or whether I am just a wreck of a human being.

4. Work is making me anxious.

5. My daughter and grandson are in Scotland. Not that daughter, the other one. Actually, both of them. But there's still one daughter here at home. Also, my son is in China.

6. Over spring break, come hell or high water, the historian and I are going to L.A. for The L.A. Project, Part 2. We will be near Joshua Tree for a couple of days, then back to the coast. I am hoping for some beach, some Griffith Park, some historic L.A. I am hoping not to think about work at all.

An Elegy to my Sabbatical

I know: an elegy is not to,

rather on, but I am not Keats,

nor was meant to be: yet once more,

o ye unfettered hours, I think

upon you and--hear my plaint,

o ye unfettered hours: you

have skedaddled and with you,

every last flouret of a thousand hues

&c &c, but O the heavy change,

now thou art gon,

damn straight, thou art gon

and never must return: seriously,

o ye unfettered hours, I

hella miss you, and now I am sick

and pining for you a full-on pine.

Sabbatical, you were worth it,

but coming back to work was

a bitch: thus sang the uncouth

swaine to her sabbatical,

which hath dissolved into a mist:

is that a sabbatical I see

behind me? Come, let me

grasp thee. I have thee not,

and yet I see thee still--

tags: elegy, pastiche