Dear broken day,

--by which I do not mean "bad day" or "day in which things went irretrievably wrong," although it's certainly possible that bad days are also broken days. Broken day, you are one with so many separate elements that you break into pieces which do not knit together. The effect of a broken day is disparate, fragmentary, without a river flowing through it. When seen from afar, a broken day has many edges that do not connect. When seen from close up, a broken day is marked with deep rifts into which one might accidentally step and wrench an ankle.

Broken day, in my agenda you look like this:

(but in reverse.)

You are an archipelago and not a land mass. Perhaps there is a bridge connecting the islands, but it is often treacherous in bad weather.

Dear broken day, I know that life often organizes itself into units of you--it is how the work gets done. I used to do better at salvaging radiant scraps of time from a day like that. This morning, for instance, I sat out in the chill as the sun stretched across the quad for a few minutes, cold and warm and quiet. But even when I have an unbroken morning, the specter of an afternoon all in pieces, obligations and appointments and enterprises, looms and infects.

I should probably make a calendar with entries like "wait for horses to appear in the back field" and "watch for the ornamental fruit to turn golden" or "lie still in the grass" or even "don't get up just yet."

One thing: I have gathered myself at the end of a day in pieces by walking. Today, I got home and pulled on my walking clothes and plugged in my headphones and walked till I felt just a little dizzy. Dizzy but restored. Broken day, would I have felt that restoration so keenly but for you?

htms