The weather has dropped into fall cloudiness and enough wind that the fans keep tipping from the windows. I am blissfully, entirely free this weekend, so I am determined to haul out those fall clothes, work on some mss. critiques, and maybe some poems. Also, some final plans for my printmaking workshop on Tuesday. I slept in and had weird dreams about my mother where once again she was alive but did not know she was dead, or we did not know, and would suddenly come to that devastating conclusion. Even coming up on a year later, there is still an un-realness to it. As if I could easily be convinced otherwise and maybe we were mistaken. I do not believe in afterlifes or ghosts as most people would think of them. But dreams are different--a weird enough space for anyone to haunt.
Since it's cozy enough to stay in bed reading, I am working my way through a stack of interlibrary loans, including that other Gillian Flynn title, Dark Places, Alice Bolin's Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, Jenny Boully's Betwixt and Between, and Ben Dolnick's Ghost Notebooks. I borrowed an old laptop from the library since mine is still non-functioning, but it's large and old and awkward and slow. So books are probably where my time is best spent.
Yesterday's board game night went off swimmingly--the fall one always seems to, with 30+ students joining in. We had that mad dose of panic when too many people show up, but it was enjoyable (especially since it always reminds me of that very first game event four years ago when it was only library staff and one student, though that student eventually wound up working for us). I am not even a solid gamer, but I do like some of the oldies, and developing the trivia nights and the semesterly murder mystery is always fun.
It's been a busy week with reserves processing and faculty requests, the kind that has be breathless by Friday with all the running to and fro. We will hear Monday some news on the restructure plans and what the rehiring possibilities are looking like. I don't necessarily mind doing ILL duties, but it eats up time I could be working on more fun things like writing articles and promoting our A of R things.
I have started sending out some dgp responses as I read since I am just shy of inside the three month window on the very first manuscripts in the door. So much goodness already in what I'm reading. I am aiming to have responses out by Thanksgiving.
I am also working on indexing this blog better, back through the years where I wasn't labeling posts consistently. In working my way through 2005, aad I am surprised how deeply unhappy I was with my MFA studies, though things in memory are much more soft focus now. There's many of those posts, but also the process of pulling together what would become the fever almanac. My first book art endeavor, the book of red. Finishing the pieces of what would become errata. Also, some drafts of poems that never made it anywhere else but the blog (here and here). I feel like that second one may be the most definitely ME poem I may have ever written, so I'm really amazed it was forgotten.
I fear I’m beginning to loosen my bones back into the landscape.
Soon I’ll be nothing but a ribcage filled with a half dozen sparrows.
