The wind died down

"...we stroked to her bones a cadenced droning,
and took back from her absence, our
amber, half-literal method of sight."

From "Windows" by Linda Bierds

***

Distractions from my pixel-catcher include:
1. Work (lots, oh my)
2. Schoolwork (a massive pile o' reading and writing; but my first essay is done, set sailing into my professor's inbox)
3. The Mur (non-trivial surgery again, later this week)

All reasonable distractions, but I'm not feeling very reasonable.
Go and have some fun for me, would you?

***

A brief update, for all y'all (and apologies for the lolcat fiesta, but sometimes lolcats happen):
1. Lather, rinse, repeat.
2. After spending every weekend since I got the course syllabus working on my first essay, upon my first meeting with my professor I was told "no, that's not what I assigned". Surprise! :-( I asked for permission to do it over, which was given, and validated what (I hope) my professor wants. I spent the last week sweating through Kant, Hegel et al again (lather, drink from the firehose, repeat), hopefully to serve up what will be accepted. And, after burning every spare minute I could find on the task, I lobbed my fresh 40+ pages of reading-the-assigned-text-with-my-comments into the professor's inbox tonight -- wish me luck.
3. The Mur is on the mend, but not quite spunky yet.

Opaque

"Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind,
And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing
These words how bodiless they are..."

From "Night Images" by Robert Fitzgerald

***

I dreamt there was a tornado coming, one so large I couldn't see it except for its effects -- the beautiful spectrum-laced cloud top, ice-crystal cloud tails making arcs in the stratosphere. My family was visiting, and of course I could not find, and then could not start, my car.

Mini-mes

"I am imagining this world but I’m inviting you in
So I can join you."

From "Museums" by Dan Beachy-Quick

***

It was windy, cold day when I saw that wreath on the storefront. And it is a windy, cold day today.

I'm going out to get gingerbread pancakes -- then back to trying to braid Kant, Hegel, Preziosi, tiny images of enormous Assyrian figures, and Peter Greenaway (among others) into a net within which I can catch my thoughts.

There's much going on, too much to type up here.
But I am glad you stopped by, glad for the invisible company -- I hope you have a wonderful, happy New Year.

Gifts

"I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give."

From "I Am Offering this Poem" by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Back-roads Christmas

"A small pine tree in the red soil
is all the company I have."

From "Mythistorema" by George Seferis

Nameless

"...these are rotten — I ask their pardon —
And we've the sun on rock and garden..."

From "Queens" by J. M. Synge

***

Starting into the next semester's reading.

In the first two weeks, I'm time-traveling from 30,000 BCE to 337 CE while digesting Winckelmann, Kant, Baxandall and Hegel among others.

*burp!*

Let's just call it "the turducken semester" -- hope I have enough Tums on hand.

Cinderblocked

"It seems like nothing
could change its color although
we couldn’t tell what color it was..."

From "He Said Turn Here" by Dean Young