restless & contented least

me & moses right before we both had blood transfusions in the same week.

this was the second poem i memorized, after "stopping by woods on a snowy evening," learned when i was ten years old because my mom offered me ten bucks.

Sonnet XXIX 

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

and although i have mostly fallen out of love with shakespeare's sonnets now, and sonnets in general (sorry sonnet enthusiasts!) sonnet 29 always resonates with my tendency towards depression, jealousy, envy, and low self-esteem.  and when i'm feeling sorry for myself (so much of the time!) since i've got this thing internalized, it rings in my ears.

so, though i now can't handle most of shakespeare because of his intense misogyny, because i hate elizabethan mistaken identity tropes, because i tired of the hermetic nature of the sonnet, and because i simply got burned out on the bard, the lines from this sonnet run through my mind unbidden. 

***


i knew the aftermath of finishing my doctorate was going to be rough, but i didn't know how rough.  i didn't know i'd be dealing with a herniated disk, extreme anemia requiring a blood transfusion, a kid's tonsillectomy gone so wrong he also required a transfusion, and a code team, restless legs syndrome (gone now--i think it was the anemia), percocet withdrawal (aftermath of the herniated disk), and the worst thing of all--

this deep restlessnes & casting & casting about.  no book or movie or music or television or writing can hold me still for longer than a few minutes.  

on account of the back problem, i haven't been practicing yoga for six months now, worsening my state of groundlessness. on account of my brain problem (which could also be anemia related), i haven't really been writing much. I haven't had anything i'm excited about going on for months.  i've missed a all the important deadlines for three months.  i've missed blogging. i've missed writing practice and yoga practice.  i've missed cooking, something that often engages and soothes me when i'm feeling contented least.  something i currently have no desire to do.  

i need my lark, my muse, my something back.  

10 things from lara

last year's lace leggings & shoes, this year's favorite dress

1) i miss blogging with julie, but have had a hard time knowing how to pick it up again.

2) i own mostly black tights this winter.

laundry day--tights for five girls

3) in case you haven't heard, you may now address me as "dr. candland."

laura ricks made this beautiful, delicious chocolate ribbon cake for me after i finished my doctorate in december in literature & creative writing (poetry).

4) my favorite foods right now are: canned pears with cottage cheese, cinnamon toast, pero mochas, sushi rice topped with cheese: all supremely unsophisticated, requiring little to no prep, and sublimely simple.

5) my favorite morning activity right now is trying out every single hair-do on the uniqlo website on beautiful cecily.

one of the plethora of hair styles i've been trying out on my barbie-head cecily

6) lula is officially a better cook than i.

lula's spudnuts:  maple, green tea, coconut glzes with butterfinger, jimmies and coconut toppings

7) like julie, i'm practicing right now--practicing living my life more fully & in the present, even though my future is in flux at the moment.  (& then--one's future is always in flux, no?  whether one knows it or not, no?)

8) i want to learn to speak french and spanish fluently.  am i too old?

9) i'm reading middlemarch,  mary ruefle's madness, rack, and honey,  c.d. wright's steal away, and i finished john green's the fault in the stars  last night.

the wonderful, beautiful, mary lynn cutler sent this gorgeous thing to me a few days after i had an online melt down in front of her.  thanks, girl!

10) writing poetry every day again, and its finally starting to feel good again.  it's all about the practice, baby!

valentines tell-all & what i wore

what the?

julie reminded me how much i hated valentine's day in 2012.  i'll admit that the day is hard for me, but not for the reasons laid out in most romantic comedies.

it's just.

a) fake and cheap, b) a huge pain in the butt, c) expensive.  i feel like i have to fabricate emotion or something, and i'm really prone to angst around things that seem inauthentic.

well, today was good!

floral couch dress from boulder, utah.

first of all, i wore this kind of ugly but very valentines-esque dress.  i got it in boulder, utah on a field trip with students.  one of my teenaged boy students wrinkled his nose and said, "it looks like a couch."  it does!  which is why i fell for it.  that and the fact that it was handmade by a woman in boulder from re-purposed vintage fabric.  it usually just sits in my closet, but i decided to try to be festive like julie and wear something for the holiday.

secondly, i started on some anti-depressants.  some might find my confession to be TMI, or possibly deleterious in future job interviews, or embarrassing, but really, people, we need to talk about this stuff.  i used to be so embarrassed about my flaws.  i'm trying to own them, accept them, & love them now.

the black dog bit me, and i need medicine to heal it.  i've been through this before, and i've been lucky that medication has been so helpful for me.  i don't love taking it, but it really helps.  i'm trying a new kind, called vibryd. evoking the idea that i will soon be super vibrant again, perhaps preternaturally so.

i forgot about him for a second.

thirdly, i have this really amazing friend.  she's sort of a goddess/witch/pioneer/muse/and my lady valentine.  yesterday she called me while i was commuting home, exhausted and sad and barely able to keep my eyes open on account of fatigue and tears.  she said, "stop by on your way home."  so i did.  she handed me this e.e. cummings book with her own marginalia and a vintage full-length silver fox coat.  i said, "how did you know?"  she said, "because jesus is real."

i guess i have to accept the coat on account of the fact that jesus told my valentine to give it to me. & it will get passed along to another lady going through hard times some day, down the road.

happy valentine's day!  read e.e. cummings!

xxoo

9. by e.e. cummings

there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic Spring is not regulated and does not get out of order nor do its hands a little jerking move over numbers slowly we do not wind it up it has no weights springs wheels inside of its slender self no indeed dear nothing of the kind. (So,when kiss Spring comes we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss lips because tic clocks toc don't make a toctic difference to kisskiss you and to kiss me)

tuesday: a list

better times will come again, no?

1) stayed in pajamas writing all day.

2) writing what?  well, my post about the anita hill documentary premiered at sundance 2013.  hopefully it will be up on bust tonight or tomorrow. 'twas a draining task.  you'll see why when you read it.

3) ate:  popcorn, blt, peanut butter m&m's.  diet coke.

4) did not:  clean house, do laundry, cook anything, grade, correspond with students, put on an outfit, lipstick or earrings, or read anything.

5) made one trip to doctor's office with mildly sick kid.

6) wondered:  should i take a shower and get dressed now?  or how about now?  wait, what about now?

hope your day was better than mine!

week-y

from the christmas card that never got sent. 50 of them are sitting right next to me as we speak.

i'm in one of those agoraphobic, anhedonistic moods:  don't want to get up, do work, talk to anyone, leave the house, etc. 

i try to resist getting too deep into this mode.

i already told you about s.o.l.e.

next week i need to focus on some really specific goals and getting back into the routine of the practices that keep my own personal black, panting dog at bay.

so here's the plan:

1) yoga on tuesday, thursday, & friday.

2) meeting with special collections librarian on thursday to work on my mapping salt lake city project.

3) work on two poetry commissions. finish one of them!  (it's already late.)

4) meet with committee chair.

5) submit poems to ten places.


what are your plans for the week?

how do you keep the black dog at bay?

pink on pink on pink: a manuscript

dress thrifted from downtown s.l.c. deseret industries, tights from orem target, earrings h&m,  doc marten boots thrifted from provo deseret industries.

cold & dark.

hard to stay optimistic in january, no?

but things are good.  i have nothing whatsoever to be sad about right now.

still.

sometimes that dark thing just takes over.  that black dog chasing you.

but ingrid's party outfit made me happy for a minute or two tonight--pink earrings, dress, and tights.  & the fact that there's a fun party of young people living it up out there somewhere, even whilst i'm home on a saturday night in my flannel nightgown.

&

should be happy that--

i did fulfill my writing goals this week:

1) write X and Y poems for gentian manuscript--check
2) make copy edits in document--check
3) print out draft of mss. to bring to writer's group--check

additionally, i changed the font from times new roman to perpetua.  i think it's an improvement.

speaking of fonts, what's your favorite?

i think i'm a little font-challenged.  or at least i've been told as much--too many years of enforcing stupid MLA style in the classroom.

i have just a few more things to do on the gentian manuscript, including finding a new title for it, before it's ready to send out.

a few sparkling points

this year's tree.

it's so dark!

so dark so early.

it's a little hard to keep the spirits up when it feels like bedtime at 5 p.m., no?  but we do what we can.

some things that shone in this dark day were these items:

1) my house is (temporarily, i'm sure) clean and decked out with decorations made and put up by my kids (plus d.j. and anna!)

the snowflakes.

2)  reading time with moses. phrases like "the greek war host", "the black ships", "single combat", and so on.  i'm becoming a nerdy little boy.

christmas list 2012.  a girl after my own heart.

3) cecily's christmas list with annotations and marginalia.  i love this gal's thinking.  she's such a good little writer and i really enjoy reading her creations every day.

this is the annotation to "totoro"

4) lula's salad:  kale, spinach, toasted pine nuts, oranges (supremed, like i taught her), fennel leaf, and meyer lemon garnish and vinaigrette. i added some cucumber and avocado because i needed to use them up before they started to turn.

in regards to line items "d.s." and "webkinz"

5) dessert made by the jasplund's.  holy, holy.  it was one of the best things i've ever eaten:  a spicy, dark gingerbread cake topped with a beautiful burgundy pear poached in unsweetened cranberry juice and spices, a dollop of whipped cream.

the annotations to "crutches"

legwear:  black leggings

looking forward to:  tomorrow's guest blog by one of my all-time sheroes

inspiration:  handmade holiday decorations, poached pears

a faint cri de couer

i think that, buried somewhere in the ridiculous number of posts i've written this year, is something about the viral article from the atlantic from anne marie slaughter, but i don't feel i've yet articulated what has bothered me about the fervent discussion of slaughter's piece, so here it goes again.

today i read a response to this article that moved me, that was salient in so many ways, but that i also feel compelled to rebuke just a little bit.

marie myung-ok lee, a writer and professor at columbia university (not exactly a slouch) talks about the limitations she lives with because of her severely disabled son.  here is one of my two favorite parts of her article (the other part is when she talks about how incredibly adequate her '69 hotpoint stove is for cooking three meals a day, despite her realtor's insistence that no one would cook on that stove.  i really hate renovation fever more than almost any of the other insane white middle-class trends of the 2000's):

When I look at friends and acquaintances, many with perfectly beautiful children and wonderful lives, and see how desperately unhappy or stressed they are about balancing work and family, I think to myself that the solution to many problems is deceptively obvious. We are chasing the wrong things, asking ourselves the wrong questions. It is not, "Can we have it all?" -- with "all" being some kind of undefined marker that shall forever be moved upwards out of reach just a little bit with each new blessing. We should ask instead, "Do we have enough?"

i completely agree with her on this.  .  

what should we be asking?  

how do we know when we have enough, or, how can we re-train our collectively disordered thinking to appreciate our blessings rather than despairing out lacks?  

i don't know.  i suck at that, especially today.

but, 

i can't leave without also speaking in defense of slaughter, whose work has been mischaracterized too often, in my mind.

so many responders, including myung-ok lee, seem to think that slaughter mostly cares about the individual woman's ability to fulfill her personal potential and live a life she feels deeply satisfied with.  certainly individual liberty is very important. but

i think slaughter makes a much broader, more encompassing, and more important point:

when we don't have women in the highest echelons of power, all women of all classes suffer.  and so do all men.  and so do all children.  and trees.  and animals.  

without the female perspective in the halls of power, something crucial is missing.  and, if i may be permitted to generalize, one of the things women seem to bring to the boardroom table is bigger, more communal or collective thinking.  thinking that takes into account the needs of the whole as much as if not more so than the needs of individual parts. there seems to be a world crisis looming, if not already here, because we have not been working holistically enough as a human family.

check out the work of valerie hudson for data that convincingly bears up this assertion.

i just wanted to say, and this is today's cri de couer, that getting sisters up there is more than a matter of individual fulfillment. it's necessary for community survival.

it's late, and i've had a rocky day.  a rocky couple of months, really, so 

hope i made any sense, 

or said something meaningful today. 

cagean: i have few things to say, & i am saying them

i have nothing to say


and i am saying it--


--john cage


***


i had a dogwood tree in the back yard when i was a little girl in virgina.


what tree did you have


when you were a little girl?


today was a dog, dog day.


thank dog it's night now.  cooler, more hopeful, somehow.


Dogwood
BY WILLIAM JOHNSON

Dog days doggone dog-tired dogwork of summer,

mowing the grass we're all coming to

the dog tags of you, me, I, we, stashed in a box,

doghouse throwaways. Even the namesake

tree whose blossoms some call Jesus-flowers

for the rust-grooved tips of the petals

as if nails now removed had indented

the shape of a cross, betrays my mood

how all those springs ago

seeing our tree nailed with bloody after bloody

crucifix I said this beauty's no foo-foo

and sure enough my dog-weary dearie

mowing today, the spring long gone,

I brush a limb on whose tired leaves mites amble

the edible thoroughfares and as if to confirm it,

our neighbor's mutt runs along the fence yapping

dogwood dogwood dogwood as the mower chugs on,

our train leaving for the city beneath the grass.

mundane

men's choir on the left, gospel on the right.  gospel choir posed in dynamic "gospel style" figurations.

christian found these two sets of barbie choirs at d.i. in the locked "rare or vintage" cases in the front of the store.  he photographed them for me, knowing how much i love barbies.  each set is a hundred dollars.  a good price, but where on earth would i display them?

did anyone out there know of such a thing as barbie choirs?  please tell me what this is all about.

other than a tiny pique of curiosity about these two choirs of barbie dolls, i felt emotions ranging from blah to depressed today.

hey, maybe a list will make me feel better!

1.  wrote morning pages.

2.  took lula to tennis.

3. took lula to lifeguarding camp.

4.  answered 15 emails for online class.

5. submitted 6 manuscripts.

6. made my first batch of ice cream in my new ice cream maker (after agonizing for weeks over what to spend my williams sonoma birthday gift card on).

7. washed and dried, but did not fold, three loads of laundry.

8.  polished off the last of the 26 ears of corn we bought on tuesday at a dinner with my sister and her boys at grandma and grandpa's house.

9.  reunited with cecily and moses after they spent 10 days in arizona with cousins.  i missed them so much! so grateful to the cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who took care of them.

10.  took lula, ingrid, and nephews to sammy's for pie shakes (but no one got a pie shake, in the end, rather italian sodas, cokes, and a mango shake.) dropped ingrid and lula at muse music for open mic night.  cover charge:  $1.00.

too much gravity

why is there so much gravity here?

today we hiked to stewart falls, a trail in provo canyon adjacent to sundance resort.  it's alpen, with a large grove of aspens

(purportedly the largest living organism on earth "For two dimensional area, the largest known clonal flowering plant, and indeed largest plant and organism, is a grove of male Aspen in Utah, nicknamed Pando (Populus tremuloides). The grove is connected by a single root system, and each stem above the ground is genetically identical. It is estimated to weigh approximately 6,000,000 kg,^[6] and covers 0.43 km² (106 acres"),

stunning rocky peaks holding summer snow fields nestled in their declivities, meadows, diverse vistas at every turn, and of course the icy falls.

it's a hike of medium difficulty for  a kid, and on the inclines, moses kept saying "why is there so much gravity here?"  i knew, and i know, what he meant.  some things feel really hard even when they're beautiful and true.

moses loved the hike, but it was hard for him.  i love my life and recognize how lucky i am to have it, but it's still really hard for me at times.

lately there has definitely been too much gravity.  i don't know what's making it feel so hard when it really isn't.

christian got under the falls and came out with brain freeze.  i wasn't brave enough to go in.

on the way down the trail,

a butterfly landed on my arm and just stayed there.

does it mean something good?  is it a magical omen?

i hope so.

butterfly sat very still on my arm for about sixty seconds.

i kind of know what james wright says when he writes, "i have wasted my life."

when you sit and look at a butterfly, you might think, at least for a moment, that nothing else matters.

actually, i have no idea what james wright means.

but to me it means that when a butterfly lands on you, and you stop and wait for it to fly away, you might realize you had been working too hard at the wrong things, and instead should be effortlessly beautiful and still.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

BY JAMES WRIGHT

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   

Down the ravine behind the empty house,   

The cowbells follow one another   

Into the distances of the afternoon.   

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,   

The droppings of last year’s horses   

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

p.s. right now we're watching glenn gould playing the bach brandenburg #5.  c. just said, "how could anyone listening to this believe there's not a god?"  i love his faith, and wish i could experience it for even one second.  i know what he means about the brandenburg #5, though.

almond lu

the sun is out

 laundry
& donuts
(crying)
swimming
& steam room
hair cut at shep salon
popcorn
& dvd
macey's
(crying)
for asparagus
almond flour
& oranges
& grading
yoga
(crying some more)
& allergies
short sleeves
& bare legs

a day
with beautiful
& excruciating
moments

luckily
i have a daughter
named lula
to sit on the couch
with me
and shoo
the black dog
away

and lula has a new haircut, a glass of chilled almond milk

pita & hummus, highs & lows

i only have a few cookbooks--this one's a must

highs:

i spent all week teaching high schoolers to cook and eat.  it's a hell of a job, but some one has to do it.  it's actually one of my favorite things to do, and was a high in my tough and busy week.

one thing i've really perfected in my kitchen is pita and hummus.  i created a recipe for hummus that works every time, and i use deborah madison's pita bread recipe.  yesterday, two teams of students created both recipes and they both turned out perfectly.  i sat and watched while they did it.

if they can do it, you can too. 

here are my recipes:

lara's hummus:

blend in food processor:

2 T tahini

4 T. olive oil

2-3 cloves garlic

1 t. salt

juice of one lemon

1 t. red pepper flakes (you can add more if you like spicy, or less if you don't)

after that stuff is ground up, add:

2 cans of garbanzos.  i drain one and leave 1/2 the liquid in the other.

Ingredients

    * 1 1/2 cups warm water
    * 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) active dry yeast
    * 1 teaspoon honey or barley malt syrup
    * 1 3/4 teaspoons salt
    * 2 tablespoons olive oil
    * 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, preferably coarsely ground with flakes of bran, OR 1 cup whole-wheat flour mixed with 1/2 cup bran [I chose the latter]
    * 2 cups bread flour

Procedures

   1. Put the warm water in a bowl, stir in the yeast and honey, and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, oil a bowl for the dough.
   2. Stir in the salt and olive oil, then beat in the whole-wheat flour and bran until smooth. Add the rest of the flour in small increments until the dough is too heavy to stir. Turn it onto a counter and knead until it is smooth and supple, adding more flour as required; this should only take a few minutes. Put the dough in the oiled bowl, turn to coat, then cover and set aside until doubled in bulk, 50 minutes to an hour.
   3. Punch the dough down and divide into 10 pieces for 8-inch breads. Roll each piece into a ball and then cover them with a damp towel. Put a baking stone or 2 sheet pans in the oven and preheat to 475°F. Allow the dough to relax while the oven heats—about 15 minutes—and then roll each ball into a circle a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Do not stack the rolled-out dough.
   4. Drop the rounds of dough directly onto the stone or heated pans and bake for 3 minutes. At this point, they should be completely puffed; remove them from the oven and cover with a towel to help them deflate.
 

and here are two more highs:

1.  reading at the provo peace international women's day reading last night.  there were some seriously good student poets, and susan howe, who teaches poetry at byu, read a beautiful poem about her mother.  susan mentioned what a great energy was in the room, and she was so right.  it's one of those times when the students are rallying to make change in their school, community and the world, and it feels great.  so thank you, students, for lending those of us who are a bit more

ummm. . . .


fatigued. . .

your youthful energy.

2.  i just discovered this provo blog (pro(vo)cation) .  it's marvelous.  

lows:

they aren't very interesting, but i hate people who are chipper all the time and positive about everything, so i'll let my eeyore flag fly a little.  here it is.  and obviously i'm not going to tell you everything, or even much at all, but i just felt like total, total crap all week, in every way, and it was really tough to get through the day, or even the minute, all week, and for various reasons.

the black dog was chasing me.

then he caught me,

wrestled me down

and stood on top of me for a few days.

but i did get through the week, and had some good times, some good moments.

and maybe that's partially what this project  of daily blogging is teaching me:  to look at the positive trends and good things and let them get me through the hard moments, or minutes, or even days, weeks and years.

to not let the bad cancel out the good.

legwear: if i had a uniform, it would be black tights and black shoes, like today

inspiration: the youth of today--cooking, writing, and kicking ass

looking forward:  dinner at pizzeria 712 with some fun and interesting friends

something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky

yesterday ingrid said she couldn't wait to get back to school so she could have anxiety about real things rather than what she called "freeform anxiety." i laughed, and knew what she meant. i've had my own bout with freeform anxiety this week. it seems so stupid, and so in the domain of a person who doesn't need to worry about her next meal or where she will lay her head at night. and yet it's difficult to talk oneself out of it.

i see it as a moral failing in my personal character as well as in my own social milieu. why the constant fretting over things as minute as paint color or ten extra pounds to things as big as your kid getting bullied or a cancer diagnosis? all with a similar amount of nervous energy? it needs to stop. a project.

but what deep solace i get from the poet. today i'm reading w.h. auden's musée des beaux arts. it's because of auden that i can maintain faith. no lie. i love that dude.

check this out:

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

i recommend reading the whole poem if you have the winter blues, the mean reds, freeform anxiety, hysteria, the noonday demon, or if the black dog is chasing you. it seems ailments of the spirit are rampant in this new season. some readers might like cotton candy cheer, but me, i like to know that i'm not alone in my suffering, that most people in the world have most of the same feelings as most other people in the world, in one form or another.

while you're at it, william carlos williams has a poem about the same subject, landscape with the fall of icarus. i'm teaching both williams and auden for my ekphrasis class. i'm not as fond of the painter as i am of the poet, but i love how the works inform each other in remote collaboration.

(how i dealt with my freeform anxiety today was by wearing a pair of supportive black tights and a structured grey shift with a tiny houndstooth pattern, and black mary jane pumps. like i'm going to the office. i'm currently writing from the coffee pod. needed to get out of the freeform house. back in college a good friend taught me that when you're floundering, you should put on a structured outfit and leave the house. in other words, no sweatpants, yoga pants, or jeggings, and no hiding under the covers.)

p.s. don't you wish you could have heard julie's reading?

happy day

i'll make this short. it's a busy day, which, for me, usually means a good day. that's what is meaningful for me today: happy and busy.

in seattle there was a taciturn woman named joyce, of norse extraction, in my congregation at church. she wore a short, grey permed wash n' wear hairstyle, silky polyester muu muus, lace-up shoes, and nude support hose. she kept a plain but immaculate house. one day we discussed women and depression at church. with no expression in her voice or on her face, she proclaimed that if you're busy enough you won't experience depression. perhaps the issue is a little more complex than that, or perhaps it isn't. maybe when you need to do tangible work for many hours a day in order to survive, you don't have time for the more abstract and debilitating ruminations that can keep you under your covers during the day time.

for today, the black dog was nowhere in sight. i taught my classes to some lovely students, did some laundry, am setting the table and making salsa for our farewell tamale dinner with adam and emily, and getting ready for yoga. for some reason all this feels really good. i won't think too much about why, or about tomorrow. and i'll post a picture from a cooking class i taught a few years ago, one that shows the beauty of the tangible. and i'll put my smoky chiles in a plastic bag to cool so i can peel them, and i'll go to yoga, and i'll eat with my family, and hopefully fall into bed tired but happy, too busy to check for the shadow of dark animal that pursues me on my bad days.

(no tights today. jeans and boots, or what my sometimes cruel daughters refer to as "jeggings." as in 'oh, mom, i see you're rocking a pair of jeggings today. not that there's anything wrong with jeggings.' on top i have a new dress from the new utah h&m [aka "hmmm"].)

acedia, and girls stealing tights

i want this to be a blog about positive things, inspired by the people i know who are, right now, attempting to change their minds, hearts, and practices, but today was very, very difficult. and sometimes many days or months in a row are like that.

please don't let it be the black dog chasing me again.

here's a book about it, since i don't want to really get into it right now, and somebody else already got into it better and more comprehensively than i could anyway.

this article made me think of the book of the same name, which i read for the first time years ago, and made me think of the tenuous walk between solitude and sociality that a writer walks, or an introvert, or a person with monkish leanings who wants to walk across the desert but can't quite make herself.

part of my problem right now, aside from the bitter cold, might be winter break, about to end, with almost no time to write and reflect. that certainly makes a writer crabby. and for now i'm going to hope that when the kids go back to school tomorrow, the black dog will run away, and i can deal with the noonday demon instead.

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on a lighter note, i bought six new pairs of tights before christmas: three black, one grey, one charcoal with a tiny black leopard print, one silvery grey. guess what? they've all disappeared. three other females, all wearing roughly the same size in tights, currently reside in exoskeleton (aka our house on locust circle), and apparently all needed new tights. sigh. i have trouble keeping in tights. do you?