a very practical update

I'm here in Vermont where I live in a small wooden cabin with a wood stove. The cabin is perched on the edge of a horse field, which is bounded with an electric fence; when the horses come galloping down the hill they come so close I can smell their musky horsiness. I can watch them graze not twenty feet from me, and they'll stand out there sometimes chewing in the rain. The field is full of fireflies, and at night their tiny green lanterns make me think about how Barrie invented Tinkerbell. I wear my Wellies and tromp around, listening to the wind. At night I look at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and the actual stars out the window over my head.

Today was Bad Writing Day, and we wrote the worst poems we could think of. Somehow, mine involved a romance between two people presented metaphorically as squirrels "running up the trunk of life./Peekaboo." I've been out of touch because everything was crazy before I left Indiana (Revise two 30-page stories! Read 500 submissions! Accept the last of the work for IR 29.2! Meet the Director of Composition about teaching Basic! Have a last ice-cream sundae at the Chocolate Moose with dear P and B who will be gone from Bloomington by the time you get back! Revise your book review! Print out the Acceptance Sheet for your thesis on the fancy paper and place it in several envelopes so it can be mailed around! Pack! Clean! Get in that car and drive drive drive). And then I was driving cross country ("Don't Stop Believin" played before I'd even left Indiana) and stopping to visit my grandparents, and listening to Amy Sedaris and singing along to Bruce. -Then- I was hanging with Mamma (hooray for good conversations and new Thai restaurants and goofy mid-90's workout gear). Finally I made it up to Vermont, where I am now, and where I, of course, have very little access to a computer.

But that means I've been reading a lot (finished PORTNOY, began ATONEMENT), and running some, and getting coffee at the Putney Co-op, our local of sorts. In the "spare time" such as it is, I'm finishing that thesis. So expect more MIA for a while, though i'll try to be in better 1-on-1 touch. And of course I'll post any charming student anecdotes. I'm planning on going to go to the hip-hop dance evening activity. But probably not letter writing. I'll have to get by on that one on my own.