Kitchen counter still-life with cantaloupes my husband brought home from the market on Main Street yesterday, plus bread board and stand mixer. And lamp. I have a very unadorned little lamp back there in the corner under the upper cabinets, because otherwise it's like a cave back there, sucking light from the whole kitchen. This zoom shot's a little grainy, because I couldn't be bothered to get up from the table and walk over there, but I like the massing of shapes.
It rained last night, big episodes of heavy rain. Early in the evening, between episodes, we walked over to the pub and sat by the tall window watching the lowering clouds mass themselves around the dome of the cultural center (the former First Baptist Church, built in the neo-Romanesque/art-nouveau style of 1908). We made it home again just as those clouds decided to reopen for a second showing of what was inside them.
Today the sun is out again, and the high is 87F with, currently, 99% humidity. Not too awful, but it's bound to be sticky out there. We have a couple of days of this, then a significant drop is forecast, with highs in the low 80s and high 70s, a little more autumnal.
Today, of course, is the anniversary of 9/11. Twenty-two years. We thought the world as we knew it was ending, but strangely, here we still are. I was 36 then, the mother of two still-young children, living in England. My own world was going to change a lot more radically by the next year, with the birth of a third child. There was going to be a future, and he was going to be in it. So --- as I learned within months of his birth --- was his younger sister. There was a world, and they were going to inherit it. On that day, though, they were unlooked-for. I wasn't expecting them. I wasn't expecting to expect them. I really sort of thought it was all over.
Of course it wasn't. But still, a lot of people didn't get to see that world, the one my children and yours are, at every moment, inheriting. Those people boarded airplanes or went to work that morning, thinking already about what they would do tomorrow. There wasn't a tomorrow, not for them. Only for the rest of us. Why? Why do we live and other people die? Inevitably we ask ourselves, don't we?
And I suppose the only real answer to this survivor's guilt is that it's a desolation, a distortion of reality. In reality, we all die. We all have a day. W.S. Merwin, in a poem that's always been a favorite of mine, writes, "Every day without knowing it I have passed the day / When the last fires will wave to me." When we say that a poem's purpose is to invite us into an experience, what we mean is that on some level the poem aims to invite us into something of our own experience, as human beings, so that we see it for what it is. What makes Merwin's poem great is that it articulates for us something that we know, but don't consciously know that we know, about our own existence.
And it's a poem that I think of today for obvious reasons: for those people, on September 11, 2001, the day came. The last fires waved. They did find themselves no longer in life as in a strange garment. I hope that the garment of eternity that held itself out to them on that day was, and is, the good one for which we all hope. I hope that the terror and the suffering were briefer for them than for the rest of us, who had to watch and rewatch and re-imagine it all, over and over, and then keep going. I hope that on the other side, which we could not see, was the beginning of an unimaginable joy. I don't know what else, precisely, one is supposed to hope for, except goodness and mercy and welcome.
Meanwhile, today I begin recording my first poetry course, "How to Read a Poem." I'll teach two sessions this afternoon, at 1 p.m. and at 4. I expect to feel flattened by the end of the day, because Zoom is like that. It sucks all the energy right out of you. But I hope it'll be all okay. I have my power-points up and ready to go, and I think I know what I'm going to say. Fortunately for me, Dana Gioia will talk for roughly half an hour of my first class session, defining what poetry is, and doing a better and clearer and more comprehensive job than I could ever do myself. And fortunately for me, from Tuesday to Friday we'll just do one class session per day, at 1 p.m., which will be easier.
So all this week, I'm dressing with Zoom in mind. I don't know that that means anything different from what I normally do, except that I'll probably shrug on some top layer over my dress, to look more polished and professional. Today I might switch out top layers: a cardigan then a blazer, or something like that. But my general MO will remain the same: put on a dress and wear it all day, for everything. Maybe I'll wear a scarf for the second recording, to make it look as though I've really changed clothes. Or maybe it doesn't matter. We shall see.
But otherwise the day will be (as far as I can foretell) as always. I'll walk the dog fairly substantially this morning to wear her out and give myself time to think. I might work out a little between recordings. I hope to make a little headway on this fiction project while I've got it between my teeth. It would be so nice to have another novel firmly in production, now that I have the new poetry book lined up, but you never know how these things are going to go. The short story collection is still out, and I'm waiting to hear . . . I should really have heard a week ago, but the publisher is having some fairly serious health problems, so I imagine they're behind in making decisions.
I have a plan for that story collection if it falls through this round --- assuming that the small press I have my eye on, where I think it'd be a very good fit, makes it through the next year and has another open reading period. They seem to be going great guns, but again, you never know. I've had my eye on small presses before, only to see them tank. It's a hard world out there. But at the moment, I have a backup plan, and as I also have a book in the pipeline for 2024, it would be okay to delay another until 2025. Not that having two books out last year wasn't a heady experience, in the wake of which anything else is bound to feel a little anticlimactic. But after this year, which has felt like lying low, I'm looking forward to having at least one new, finished thing out there in the world.
But plans are only that --- plans, which is code for hope, with details. Every year without knowing it we pass the day. Every day without knowing it we pass the moment. Every moment which isn't that moment comes to us as pure gift. That moment, too, is gift, though naturally we want to defer it in favor of other, more present gifts.
So now, because now is a gift, I hope to arise from this table and to dress myself, because that too is a gift: the strength and ability to dress myself, the choice of things in which to dress myself, the beauty of fabric and color and movement. All gift. All the time, because time itself is a gift, and we exist in it, pure gift, until we don't.
Wearing (all a gift, yes?):
A repeat of Maggie B-for-Blue, most recently seen in this exact configuration last Wednesday. I was actually thinking I'd worn her more recently than that, but the time does fly faster than we tell ourselves it does.
I figured she'd make a good neutral backdrop for a change of top layers, as well as being cool enough for a long walk in the not-so-autumnal morning air.
She is comfortable and airy, the kind of dress you put on and then just don't think about again. The simplicity is nice on a warm day, though I am looking forward, with great avidity, to playing with layers on the simple base of this dress as the weather (eventually) cools down.
I also like that, for a day when I'm recording these classes which people can access all year round, the marine-blue is a classic, seasonless color. My own coloring won't be overwhelmed by it, and it won't call undue attention to itself. It will read as neither summery nor wintry. It's really the perfect color with which to kick off this course --- later in the week I will no doubt wear teals, greens, and periwinkle, for variety's sake, but this is a good beginning.
Right now, in the cool morning house, I'm wearing my alpaca cardigan with it, and enjoying the play of aqua-on-blue.
This might very well be what I wear for the first recording session, with my long silver necklace layered on. Then maybe a jacket and scarf for the second round to change things up.
I've run damp hands through my day-3 hair multiple times to refresh the waves --- might or might not add some gel for extra hold as it dries. I think I'll probably wash it tomorrow morning, then again on Friday for the weekend, so I don't have to bother much with it while I'm at Marly's (jaunts in the mountains, but also Mass in Sylva next Sunday). I seem to have wet hair in most of these photos, but really, I love this cut. I wasn't sure about it at first, but as it settles --- wow, it's nice, even though it was just a cheap textbook Great Clips bob. It waves up nicely and holds its shape, even overnight. If I weren't appearing on a screen today, I wouldn't have bothered refreshing it, because it was totally okay. I love the vintage-y vibe it gives me, as well as the ease. I can still pull it back with my favorite claw clips and little Invisibobble wavers, but I don't have to, which is nice. Resorting to ponytails as much as I was had begun to cause some breakage, which is one reason why I cut it so much shorter, but I appreciate not needing to do that now. I also appreciate, and think I'll continue to appreciate as cold weather comes, the relative ease of washing and drying it. It still doesn't dry instantly, but I no longer have wet hair sticking to my back for hours. I'm going to try to build the habit of getting it cut every 6 weeks from here on out, to maintain the length and shape, because I really love it.
It's all gift. On with the gift of the day.
UPDATE:
First class-session outfit variation (because actually, I've walked for 45 minutes and now am too hot to put on an alpaca cardigan):
Linen big shirt to the rescue for a blue-on-blue effect. Plus dry hair that's more or less behaving, and purple shoes nobody will see on Zoom. I love this shirt so much, especially in its slightly darker, bluer redyed color. I don't recall wearing it over this Maggie before (or maybe I have?), but I really like the combination and would happily wear this out in public for full-body view.
Stay tuned for the late-afternoon Session 2 outfit variation!
MID-AFTERNOON:
One class session down, in which I probably talked way too fast, but there it is.
Here's what I've changed to for Session 2:
I sort of feel like Jane Goodall in the wrong shoes. In fact, I would not wear these shoes with this outfit, if I were wearing it anywhere but on Zoom in my dining room.
Note that I still have on the Maggie of this morning, but have appropriated the linen lab coat as my top layer this time.
I could see this outfit with either brown or gray sandals, or, conversely, in chillier weather, with boots and tights. I do like the natural, earthy vibe that it gives, and I could see wearing the coat and belt over just about any dress. The coat is almost long enough to be a dress in itself --- not quite, for my comfort zone, but almost. I think I'd really love this as a belted overlayer with my redyed green Sierra and boots, as a fall look. The linen duster is heavy enough to be actually a pretty substantial outer layer --- I wore it in the summer, but not as much as I'd thought I would, because it was simply too heavy for hot weather. For transitional weather, however, it should come into its own.
And it seems like a decent non-gray neutral for my skin tone, even when I squint suspiciously at the camera.
Oh, well, back to class.