Summer day.

if you look it up, there's a picture of me.

Not that it really matters, but I couldn't fall asleep last night. 1:30 a.m., wide awake. I got up and did this and that for awhile (on the internet, obviously. I may or may not have purchased a yellow sweater on eBay.). When I got up this morning at 8:30, it wasn't with great energy, exactly. The historian, who had done the same middle of the night wakefulness rhumba, was just leaving.

He drove away. The house was quiet.

I just want an internet beat that
gives me the good stuff. That's all.

I ate my granola and took care of little business items associated with teaching in the fall. Talked to a part-time faculty member. Set up a meeting, then set it up again. And again. Etc. Found this and this and this in my quest for a better internet daily protocol. Took a shower.

Ted Hughes drafted long hand, then 

crossed things out. I am drafting 

on my laptop. I haven't got to the 

crossing things out part yet.

And then started a draft of my/the/a poem. [insert joyful emoticons and exclamation points!]

After awhile, I betook myself to the cinema for an afternoon showing of a movie that has been fairly universally disliked. I brought my own treats: half of a fennel bulb, saltines, a packet of cashews, and a water bottle with my favorite iced tea/limeade concoction. I was the only person in the theater. As I watched the movie, I could see where people would find things to criticize in it. It wouldn't be hard. And yet, as I sat there, the sole person laughing at the jokes and crying, a little, at the moving parts, I thought, but I still like it. It's not like I was trying so hard, either. I liked it.

Oh, like I'm going to tell you what it was. I can feel you judging me already.

my Greek panzanella was even
more delicious than this picture.

After that, I went to the store and bought peppers and cherry tomatoes and a good loaf of bread, a red onion, some kalamata olives and feta, and made Greek panzanella salad, which is pretty much the epitome of what you should eat at the end of a strenuous day in which you have battled fatigue, advanced the mission of your department by emailing from home, made gains on your own internet proficiency, began in a substantial way a draft of one of the two poems you hoped to write this summer, and successfully balanced your critical faculties with your basic dumb love of movies.


Make and eat that salad, my friends, and be whole again beyond confusion.