Reading and Writing and Dead Grass

Happy Easter, peeps!
I spent almost all of yesterday online, putting electronic comments on my students' final paper drafts, emailing them back, etc. Not all have complied with getting drafts sent out by Friday evening, which makes things more difficult for them to have a polished final draft. I also got a rubric out that shows how I will be grading said final drafts, started looking at poems for submission to lit journals, and deciding which journals to potentially send to. Today I'll continue that, compose cover letters and assemble the separate packets, each formatted according to the whims of the various editorial staffs, and continue reading Joan Didion, which I read until 2 this morning.

The pic adequately fits my mood. The weather is cold, windy and gross, and the warm-up promised on Monday has been moved off at least another day. All of which makes Davo unhappy. Oh well...it keeps me indoors and working on things I need to be working on. The bread turned out fine, which means I have material for sandwiches. The laundry is almost done. It could be worse.

I have tea on the stove. I've got the 6th symphony of Tabakov (who has one of the angriest-sounding requiems I've ever heard) on the stereo. Bread and Nutella. A day of typing like a crazy thing on the computer. The Year of Magical Thinking is an excellent somber read. A book-long essay that explores grief, which, as the various scientific journals she includes describe is a phenomenon that comes in waves. The book follows suit, with a calm, quietly persistent return to December 30, 2003 to revisit the events around that almost-dinner with her husband in the living room. This from Chapter 3:

"It was deep into the summer, some months after the night when I needed to be alone so that he could come back, before I recognized that through the winter and spring there had been occasions on which I was incapable of thinking rationally. I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome. In my case this disordered thinking had been covert, noticed I think by no one else, hidden even from me, but it had also been, in retrospect, both urgent and constant. In retrospect there had been signs, warning flags I should have noticed. There had been for example the matter of the obituaries. I could not read them. This continued from December 31, when the first obituaries appeared, until February 29, the night of the 2004 Academy Awards, then I saw a photograph of John in the Academy's "In Memoriam" montage. When I saw the photograph I realized for the first time why the obituaries had so disturbed me.
I had allowed other people to think he was dead.
I had allowed him to be buried alive."

Well, with that, off to read, type, and write.