Some houses in my neighborhood:
Both my daughters have fantasized, at various times, about living in that purple house, and I can't say I blame them. They can buy it, and I can dodder on down the street and move in, in my old age. That would work just fine, I think. I've always been partial to the sunny yellow one next to it, but really, either house would do.
And the railroad tracks at the bottom of that block, which we cross to get to the greenway trail:
This town is quiet, almost all the time, but life is really unutterably pleasant, day to day. The weather at its worst is never all that bad, and at its best, it's marvelous. As winters go, I'll take this, thank you. People who live here might not induct you into their inner circles (kind of a drawback of smalltown life, but then I'm a recluse anyway), but they do greet you cheerfully when you're out walking. I'll take that, too, thank you. We all have our privacy, but by tacit cultural agreement we have all resolved that there's no reason to be hostile about it.
I spent about an hour this morning when I first got up drinking coffee and taking out most of the poems I had put into the new book MS, including the sapphics poem I thought I needed to finish it out. The collection as a whole was feeling flabby, and I realized that if I moved one other longish poem to the end, it made a strong finish, a good last ine to end the whole book on. I've reduced it from three sections to two, and moved the cycle of hermit sonnets to the front, so that he really dominates the book. I think he did anyway --- that was always the longest section --- but really, this whole book is his, and he should cast his shadow over it. I don't have enough poems in that sequence to make a full book, or I'd just have those, but I think the second section works well (better, now that I've trimmed some things) as an extension of the hermit's concerns. I also wrote one more sonnet, because I realized I hadn't included the Annunciation in his year (it's actually ended up being kind of a dark poem, about his past), and pulled two more out of the outtakes file, so that the cycle numbers forty sonnets, as I think it needed to, as a cycle about going out into a kind of personal desert to do penance and pray. The sonnets follow the whole liturgical year, from Advent to Christ the King, but they also, taken as a whole, represent a kind of Lenten life. So I think, anyway. I want to send this manuscript off soon and be done with it, but I'm glad I did this tinkering today. The MS comes to 60 poems, over 72 pages, exclusive of front matter and section-division pages, and that seems about as long as I would want. Motherland was long, and I did just throw all the poems I had into it, because it was so many years in the making, and I really despaired of ever having one book, let alone any subsequent ones. Now I think, "OK, I'll set these aside for the third book and see how they hang together."
That feels like a good morning's work. After I'd done it, I got dressed and walked with Dora for about an hour. Now I've come back and eaten and am kind of girding myself to do some copy-editing for a while. I also want to read a little more Brooks and Warren, and some more Janet Lewis poems.
But first! What am I wearing? Here's a hint:
If you said, "What is Wool& Sierra?" you have won this round of clothing Jeopardy. Here's the whole lewk for the day:
I'm wearing Sierra today as a kind of jumper/pinafore over a thrifted bamboo swing dress that I mostly use to sleep in. At the end of 2021, going into a (putative) no-buy year, I bought four of these little dresses at cheap-cheap-cheap secondhand prices, and although I don't wear them much as daywear anymore, because compared to my Wool& dresses they're thin and don't hold their shape as well, I do still get a lot of use out of them. I do still like bamboo a lot as a fiber: it's not as warm as wool, but it's a decent thermal layer, with a lot of breathability and moisture-wicking properties. Again, maybe not as good as wool, but pretty good nonetheless. I find these dresses really great to sleep in, but today I thought I'd put on this burgundy long-sleeved number as an under-dress. I love the burgundy and charcoal-gray together, and I'm very warm and comfortable, even without a cardigan on over. Old gray cotton-blend leggings, Target wool-blend socks from several years ago, Tari boots.
I'm continuing to wear my spare glasses. For reading and work, I can't get over how much more comfortable my eyes are with these larger lenses. A lot of problems I've been having with focus (not attention, but actual, literal, visual focus) have evaporated. I'm so happy with this development (and can't believe that I'd kind of forgotten all about these glasses) that I've bought another Zenni pair in a similar shape and size with the same prescription, which seems to be working brilliantly, again especially with these larger lenses.
I have been reading basically monocularly, because my left eye hasn't been focusing/seeing through my lenses, but with these suddenly I have my full reading vision back. I'm not seeing double. Yes, yes, I have been living with these issues and putting off going to the eye doctor, because every time I have an eye exam my vision turns out not to have changed, unless it's improved, which is one of the bizarro things that happen to you when you get old, but not old enough for macular degeneration. But this is kind of miraculous. Anyway, I ordered these I-hope-cute glasses. Again, same prescription, roughly the same lens shape and size, though these are supposedly a little narrower, for smaller faces, which is generally good for me. They're plastic/acetate, which should be a little more comfortable than these wire frames. I've had to wrap the earpieces of these with bandaids, because they were cutting into my ears, and the nosepieces, over time, start to dig a little. But I can SEE, which is quite something.
I'll still wear my other glasses --- in fact, I have a couple of older pairs whose prescription is still about the same as this one --- for dressing up. My last pair of glasses but one, in fact, are my favorite glasses ever, in terms of how they look --- blue, not too large, not the current trend but flattering on. I can wear those to parties if I want.
I know I'm going on about this, but it's exciting. I've only ever had one pair of glasses at a time, because they've always been so expensive. Even with vision coverage, the glasses I've ordered at the optician's have been at least twice as expensive as these glasses I've ordered from Zenni. And the Zenni glasses actually work better. Anyway, the idea that I could have everyday/work glasses, and dressing-up glasses, and options about what I put on my face, is pretty thrilling. I was going to get new glasses anyway, but I'm glad I thought to put on these ones I'm wearing today, because they've changed my whole trajectory.
These aren't as fun as my more colorful glasses, but they are really growing on me. Being able to see is absolutely growing on me.
And now that I can see, I really need to go on copy-editing, a task made much easier by being able to see clearly.