Fade.

Such a plethora, all packed into this one sphere of bone.

Paled and shadowed.

The rainfall late this morning was only the beginning: this week was the one when--in addition to the true and humbling greatness of Tuesday night--all the shit everywhere hit any fan it could find. Two-thirds of the way through the semester, we find ourselves confronting the Big Questions, the ones that make my head and heart hurt. Is it possible to teach civility? do we tackle racism or sexism first? Can we tackle either on its own? Is it possible to tame the irrational and horrifying parts of human nature through strenuous exercise of reason? Are we allowed to pretend that we don't know there are great panting chasms on every side of where we tread--just so that we can get through a week? Will anything ever get better, truly better?

By the time I came home for dinner, I realized that the last place I wanted to be was alone in my own mess in the apartment, and so I headed next door to perch in my flaming-sworded friend's living room for a little while. It wasn't long before I was ready to eat my soup, practice my reading, and head off to perform my latest prose-piece-in-development for an audience of friends and fans. I am pleased beyond anything that working on it this week has allowed me to remember a detail I love from my childhood and that I return to every once in awhile: my father once told me that on a paisley tie, it's important that the paisleys touch--so that none of them will get lonely. Everything my father touched like that came to life then, and still does now.

Tonight I sit in my new desk chair: finally, the right kind of chair, for here in my home. It's time: the real work needs to get going now.

Then.

Only later would she realize just how almost hallucinatorily strange the week had been.

Portents.

On my way to the office today, I passed a neighbor-colleague's house just as he was packing his children into the car for school. He was telling them a story, and his voice drifted down the driveway: "Yes we can! Yes we can!"

Moments later, I saw a turkey vulture with its wings fully outstretched. It perched in the very top of a leafless tree. Another vulture sat beside it, as if waiting. The vulture with its wings out seemed not to move. I peered into the sun, watching for any sign of life. The outstretched wings did not even tremble. The huddled vulture sat still. I imagined the last sweep of air, the last swoop toward the tree, and then a branch through the breastbone, an impalement. I did not take a picture.

But hours later, both birds were gone.

Everywhere here today, people were giddy, exhausted, quietly gleeful. The world runs on as it did yesterday, only more so.

Yes.

All day, I waited for 6 p.m.--the closing of the polls in Indiana--to arrive. All day, it was a weird almost-mantra: watch Indiana. If Indiana wavers, stays purple or shades blue, things might just turn out okay. My family has been in Indiana for a quarter century. On election days, our state closes first and is declared first, almost without fail.

Tonight, Indiana is still uncalled, even though one candidate has conceded and the other has begun to take charge with sobriety and grace. Things might just turn out okay.

Yes, we did. And yes, we will.

Not much else to say:

Feeder.

When I took the EARS picture last night, I was leaving Lowe's with a pile of bird-feeding materials in my backseat. This afternoon, I took a break from grading to hang up said bird-feeding materials, so that when I sit at my red desk in the living room, this feeder is one focus of my attention. That tail you see belongs to one of the many tufted titmice that are apparently ecstatic to have had a whole new food source materialize in their neighborhood. Of course, I now realize that I may need to re-hang the feeder so that it's perpendicular to the window--or else I'll always catch this kind of glimpse--a feeder, with a tail hanging off the corner.

The moral of today's story: own your own drill, and learn how to use it.

After dark, the cows started to shout and call in the nearby pasture.

All saints.

I am happy to say that a particular job-related project, on which I have been stalling in even more disturbingly childish fashion than I want to admit, is finally underway now and not nearly as grueling or awful as I made it out to be. Thus, things seem to be as ever they were.

But I am, in fact, a child--at least where signage is concerned. While I waited at the stoplight, as I headed home with my new birdfeeders and hanging hardware, I had time to snap a shot of my favorite sign burnout of late:

I think that it needs an exclamation point. EARS!

Savagery!

And a happy, non-threatened Halloween to you, too.

Watch.

I was shooting, and then a bird was there, quiet and stilled. And was I ever glad I'd paused.

Tree on fire.

As in, I saw a.

By the way: -43 words today. It's not astounding, but it's momentum, and momentum matters.

Rocked.

Today: one of those days when my main job was to talk, and to talk and to talk and to talk. By the time I reached Bach at 7, my own silence was a loud relief.

Hazards and safeties.

I have such a love affair with early cinema that it is nearly dangerous for me to teach: it's too hard to stop, too hard to come down once I get started on what I know, what I wish I knew, what I know some of but want to know more about.

I'm proud to report a word count of -267. That's nearly a page. I'm perhaps equally proud to say that as of this week, I am formally someone's piano pupil again. Thursday is my first lesson, and tonight I did my first practice session since June, remembering with each key I hit why it is that playing is good for me: it's one more labor that can't be done all at once, one more field where the body needs time to learn its way and to keep to it.

Down with blocks.

This week, I feel as though I've barely had words to spare, even for myself. Tonight, I relocated my copy of Professors as Writers, one of the writing guidebooks that didn't make the trip to England with me last year, and read a couple of its chapters. Maybe it has to do with the fact that one of my classes launches into Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland this week, and that I'm reading Through the Looking-Glass (possibly for the first time) in order to supplement our discussions, but somehow I've convinced myself that I can turn my world upside-down again, just by force of decision and will. Of course, I have a long, long history of making ambitious schedules, failing to carry them out (because they're well-nigh inhuman), and then, in my grand frustration, calling myself self-denigrating names. But at the very least, I'm hoping that my attempt to re-set my priorities will result in a daily practice more in line with what I want to do with this life.

Who knows--I may even restart my word count, though perversely, my first writing task is a reduction, since the journal to which I submitted the essay on which I have been working intermittently since February has requested that I trim eight to ten pages (out of about thirty-six--not such an unreasonable request, simply a suggestion that I sacrifice some darlings if I'm going to see this one in print). Perhaps I'll restart the word count as a negative page count.

Whatever happens tomorrow, though, I'm now constantly calling to mind the fact that everything, from here on out, comes into being through the smallest of increments: one little thing at a time. Bird by bird.

Sights to behold.

I watched this squirrel whip his tail in a circle.

The full scene from my window:

Down, out.

Tonight: big festivities, big. Eating, dancing, schmoozing. Pool-playing. Too much to be so epigrammatic about, but epigrammatic seems to be the way of things, these days.

Again.

Again, I say: escape to dinner.

Entanglements and puzzlements.

Sometimes the only thing for a busy week is to take oneself out to dinner.

Bright, bright.

So many stars tonight on my way home that I almost forgot that I've almost forgotten what it was like to cross the Cam in the dark.

Small sorrow.

First I left my camera away from home last night, and now I don't seem to be able to make it talk to the computer. This state of affairs is no good. And I had a picture I really wanted to give you this evening. I am starting to do the things my father taught me: if there's a cable involved, try a different cable. Try a reboot. Try different permutations of plugging the camera in, plugging the cord in. And nothing. So, here's a birdhouse instead.

Perhaps the machines will be happier in the morning.

Gah! [A postscript, moments later.] And now I've dropped the cap for my hot water bottle right down the drain of my bathtub. Clearly, something has gone wrong with my overall vibe.