Beautiful things.

The Willamette River Historical Stream Channels

"This visually replaces the relatively flat landscape of the valley floor with vivid historical channels, showing the dynamic movements the river has made in recent millennia."

This poem:

...For once the shells split and sapphire 

And fire-opal fledge in their filth  

And six or seven small spurts of flame  

Are tumbled out into the dazzle

A micro press with approximately the most beautiful landing page ever:

This little glory of bookmaking:

(Charlotte's picture of things in progress)

Bone folding the pages. #bookproject

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Nov 25, 2015 at 5:47pm PST

Today I walked into my building at 10:30 a.m., and walked out at 7 p.m. In between, I graded and talked to many many students. Waited in vain for a few of them. Talked to colleagues who were cheerfully doing the day-before-a-holiday work of talking and waiting. Worked with Charlotte on the book project--so many steps!

I feel lucky about my work, all of it, the teaching and the planning and the writing and the dreaming. I am lucky in my friends, the ones I have known since I was a half-formed girl, and the ones I am lucky enough to work with every day. I feel lucky in my family: the big, beautiful chaos of it, the history of songs and movies and love and argument, the people from whom I come and the people who come, in part, from me. I'm lucky in love, in my marriage, in my home, in the solace and shelter I find there. The world is unendurable and unbearably beautiful. It's mystifying, it is terrible, it strikes awe. I am tired, I am impatient, I am alive.