October the First

The morning glory planted in July has decided to begin blooming. Summer continues here.


My Office:



October 2: I cannot resist a little dig at those living north of me. It is October two, six-thirty in the morning, and I am sitting on my back deck drinking coffee and enjoying the sounds of morning. It is still dark and it is also foggy, but it is not cold.

October 1: I had the misfortune to become sick after my last post. I spent much of last week blowing my nose and coughing. I am still coughing. I have become a great breeder of cold viruses, and they are unwilling to leave such fertile ground. I am slowly pushing them out of my body, but they have built up some huge bunkers, I may have to go nuclear on them.

I had a good week though. My poetry workshop was fun last Monday, though I was not feeling well. I missed only one class on Thursday due to my illness, but I have fallen further behind on my work. I will need to extend my weeks by at least a week to catch up now. Friday I sat at the registration desk for the SCLA (southern comparative Literature association) conference that was happening at NCSU. I was there for an nearly two hours, and I had fun watching all the people come.

Sunday I walked with Carol down to the lake for the first time in a week. Those are the photos that are up top (and linked below). I am studying Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner for class, and the dead sailors were following me as I walked.

Fall

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It is 6:05 am on September 22. I am sitting on my back deck listening to the closing bars of night's song. A few thousand miles and a few months changes so many things. The weather websites dare to say that it is 72 and feels like 79. Up north I can imagine freezing temperatures, barren trees, and faces beginning to reflect the shorter days. That is not to say that the days are not shrinking here as well, but how can I miss the sun when I can spend hours sitting on the back deck doing my homework, and getting a few rays. Here I am not locked inside my small apartment watching the world go by. here I am a bit awed by the climate, and that awe includes the sense of fear that was once associated with the word.

"The eye sees more than the heart knows." William Blake from the Visions of The Daughters of Albion. I was watching Gandhi, the movie, last night. There is a scene shortly after he returns to India as he is traveling in a luxurious motor car through a poor part of the city. He looks around and sees the poverty and suffering and that line from the beginning of Blake's poem rose in my mind. I like the term motor car, it conveys a different sense than just car. I am having a hard time reconciling Blake in my own mind. I think he was a brilliant visual artist, but his poetry is spotty. he was never fully able to escape the chains set up by Milton, the way Hart Crane managed near the end of his career to break free from Eliot. But I can admire Blake's creative insanity, and his attitude towards his society while at the same time feeling that he is a little petulant for not being accorded the respect he felt was his due. I suspect, without evidence, that he deliberately courted his status as an outsider to allow him to make judgments of his society. I was a bit shocked to hear in the Romantics class that people are not able to decipher Blake, and yet it is all so simple.

I am behind in my composition literature review. It is due in three weeks, and I have not made much progress. My topic is still fuzzy, my question keeps modifying itself, and I keep wondering what value there is in my inquiry. This class is my favorite class this term, even ahead of the poetry workshop. Because of Labor day and my nasty cold I have only attended two workshops, and no feeling of a group has arisen so far. That is not the groups fault, for I think they are nice people, and John is a good workshop leader. Not enough time has passed to create a sense of unity.

My schedule for the weekend is as follows: work on the comp lit review, work on my short paper (five pages) for the Romantics class, think about a longer research project for the Romantics class, read and respond to some of the poems handed out in class last week by my class mates, edit my poems, and work on bringing another one or two into some kind of shape that I can then pass around to the group. Some where in there I need to make a chili and take a long walk.

It is cloudy this morning. That is likely why it is so wonderfully warm here. Unfortunately it also lengthens the darkness. It is after six thirty, and I can just barely see the shape of the leaves. And there is another hour before the sun actually rises. I read in the paper this week that the leaves should begin their transformation this week or next. The drought may reduce the length and variety of color they express. It is still strange to walk around town and see flowers, to walk through the 'woods' and see flowers. I was sitting on the second floor balcony at the Talley Student Center yesterday before class looking north. There is a tree belt that shelters the train tracks from view about a block from where I was sitting that contains a fair number of pine trees. I was wondering as I watched the students move back and forth below me if that green strip will last into the winter.

Is this America?

I was very disappointed to hear that the Canadian dollar was equal to the American peso yesterday. On the upside, our postal service is still far better than the Canadian system. I suppose some day I should sit down and list the differences between Canada and America. That might make a poem.

I was right. I was coming down with a cold, and a nasty one it turned out to be. I went to bed Sunday night around six and pretty much slept right through to Tuesday morning. I am feeling much better today and I always think back to my smoking days and remember how I would have been having coughing fits still.

Because I was so sick Monday, I missed all of Monday's classes. I have felt like I am way behind because of the missed days, not just Monday, but the days of low activity around the major sickness. My tasks this weekend are to try and get a sense of being back in control of my work load. The major areas I have to focus on are my writing-which I have done nothing with since getting sick; deciding where I am going to go with my lit review for my comp course, and maybe even selecting a few articles; reading and responding to some of Blake's poetry, and so on. I find my mind is not willing to acknowledge the quantity of work I should be doing. Moments of panic overwhelm reason.

We had a nice rain storm last night. The weather place says between 1.8 and 1.9 inches. The streams are higher this morning, and the water was running over the spillway at lake Johnston (wish I knew how to spell) as the image above shows (along with the ones under the latest photo link). It is a beautiful morning, sunny, a bit chilly (only 70), smelling of rain and wet leaves. My maintenance company was cruel this week, they went into the empty lot and chopped down most of the sheltering shrubs under the pretense they were harboring rodents. Now there is a big patch of wood chips and I can look under the neighbors back deck. I think the real reason was to reduce the chance that the next tenants would not take advantage of the location and grow some more weed like the last batch were doing.

I suppose I should go get busy with my work. Today's high is 82, how will I ever adjust to the increasing cold?

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Summer, the extended version

My sister Barbara asked me the other day if it was still green here. So I went around the last few days taking some photos of green. In fact, it remains very warm and very dry. The drought conditions remain high. Water restrictions have been imposed, lawn watering is limited, and car washing is only allowed on the weekends. Though for that last one I would not mind if it were banned outright. Dirty cars are not a big worry for most at the moment I would not think.

My week has been busy, and the weekend is supposed to be busy. I should be doing some research, but I am looking around for ways to avoid working. I do have a moderately valid excuse this morning: I feel like I am coming down with a cold. I will blame all the sick kids at school.

I spent part of the week putting up shelves and staining a door (which I will turn into a desk, all I need now is a piece of glass to cover it). My abilities as a carpenter/cabinet maker are quite pathetic, but I managed to do these small tasks without being too incompetent.

Do you suppose it is too early for a nap?

Week Three begins

I do not think it is right that this is week three already. Really, week one was only three days long, so it should not count as a week. Last week should have been week one, making this week two. The reason I am engaging in this sophistry is to avoid having to make a final decision on a literature review. I have to let the comp prof know what I am going to do by the end of this week, and there are so many choices. Ahh well, I suppose I still have one and a half days before classes start again.

Carol and I went off to Home Depot yesterday and picked up some material to make shelves to hold books. It is crazy expensive to build, but it is cheaper than trying to buy pre-built shelves. I also bought some cheap document frames while there, so I can hang my diplomas and degrees. It still feels strange to say/write/read that and to think of myself as a grad student. If you had said I would be here 15 years ago I would have asked you to share the dope, for it must be some pretty good shit.

My plans for the rest of the weekend are simple. Read a large number of articles, figure out how to lead a class discussion on Tuesday, figure out what I want to focus my lit review on, figure out what I want to do a large research paper on for Romantic literature class, and...

I am also in the process of trying to find an old door which I can convert into a desk. I need a larger desk. I have not even been working for two weeks and things are already falling off and crashing to the ground.

My classes were fun last week. The poetry workshop was great, and the other class have teachers who are excited and love what they are doing. Things feel different as a grad student, but some of that may come from my own attitude. Since the Wednesday I missed class I have had a perfect attendance record.

The weather has cooled down a bit. I had to warp up in a blanket to drink my coffee outside this morning. It has been a beautiful morning, clear, calm, and feeling like early fall though I have hopes that the temperatures will remain warm for another few weeks.