Shopping

Yesterday, after unloading a few bags of things at the Goodwill, I went inside to see if I might want to bring home any previously owned stuff to fill the gap left by the removal of my own previously owned stuff. Ah, the vicious Goodwill circle . . . Though I am not in general very tempted by shopping, I do enjoy moseying through the crazy disorder of the books and housewares, and yesterday I found the complete poems of James Wright and two sturdy plain drinking glasses of the sort that Tom had recently broken. Success! So then I thought I'd take a look at the clothes--these days almost always a waste of time at the Goodwill, now that the vintage buyers skim everything off first. But magically I found a beautiful red suede jacket that fits me like a glove and will look grand with the jeans I bought a few weeks ago . . . and get this: they are jeans in a size smaller than my usual one. I mean, what's with that? I'm almost 61 and I've dropped a size? What is this miracle?

Names

As you know, Little Chuck's full name is Charles Snowball Dirtball Van Pelt. But naturally he's acquired a few more, to be deployed in special circumstances. When he sits around sweetly, Tom pats him on the head and says, Aw, Charles. When he is his everyday spunky self, he is Hey, Chuck, stop that. But during periods of hysteria, when he is pushing silverware on the floor and climbing on the counters and worming his way into the open dishwasher and galloping up and down the stairs like a lunatic, he is Hasty Stan Stanwood, star player for the Black Sox. We had some serious Hasty Stan action last night, when he dumped a water glass all over the dining room table, just as I was getting ready to serve dinner. My son refers to this as velociraptor behavior: those moments when a kitten almost seems to become airborne. Put Hasty Stan on first and he'll steal third in the blink of an eye. It makes for an exciting mealtime.

Books

I finished rereading Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, one of the great book loves of my life. And then I finished reading Sarah Ruden's I Am the Arrow, in which she uses six Plath poems as a way to talk about Plath's writing and life. I've already read a great deal about Plath, and I've already spent a lot of time with Plath's poems. Is it wrong to say that I've reached the stage when I no longer care about anyone else's close readings?

This is the apple pie I baked yesterday afternoon, the first apple pastry of the season, and I have to say that I am smug about its good looks. For reasons best known to itself, the crust behaved beautifully--no rips, no sticking--and the filling was tender but not soggy. (I dislike a gluey, flour-packed filling but I do like a pie I can slice.) Now, if I only knew how to center a photograph. . . .

It was a big kitchen day: in addition to the pie, I roasted a chicken and made gravy and a big corn and vegetable salad. Now we'll have cooked chicken to work with for a few days, and today I've got another round of tomatoes to simmer down into sauce, chard to prep for a tian, and lots of leftover apple pie. Seems like a reasonable start to September.

I need to run a few errands today, and I need to get back to my desk and look hard at some poems. Yesterday my friend Betsy dropped by with a present she'd bought for me as thanks for reading her manuscript . . . though all I had said to her afterward was "This is a great poetry collection! I have nothing to recommend! It's wonderful!" So I do feel as if I wasn't in fact all that helpful, though maybe praise is good enough on its own. It was a manuscript that didn't need me in the slightest. But Betsy brought me a present anyway.

The task did remind me that I ought to gird my loins and start looking at my own piles of uncollected poems. Do I want to make another book? I guess I do. Right now I just don't know how to get myself ready to start. Eventually, if the past is any indicator, I'll be seized with a sudden organizational idea and then I'll tear into the project. For now, though, submit submit is too weighty a chant. Ugh. 

Yesterday's ferry hop out to the islands was perfect--beautiful soft weather, no crowds, and we timed our trip for low tide so we could walk across the sandbar from Little Diamond to Great Diamond. We ate a picnic lunch in the shade, we picked our way over a beach where the only other visitors were three women reading books, we wandered gravel roads and paths, and we got home in time for an afternoon nap.

It's sad that the work week returns so quickly, but thus is time and here we are again. Little Chuck, who had a spurt of badness yesterday evening (pushing silverware off the dining room table, sneaking onto the counter in pursuit of cheese), is curled up on my shoulder in the guise of a good little boy. But such laziness cannot continue. I need to grocery-shop today, and send in my passport renewal, and deal with a pile of laundry. I ought to start thinking about high school class plans. I have two poem drafts smoldering and a box of stuff to cart to the Goodwill.

Yesterday I finished reading Toibin's The South, and for the moment I'm passing the time with Stevenson's Kidnapped till I step back into serious concentration.

Today is the first day of school in Portland, and my walk will be crowded with parents and children. A few leaves are changing color; a few are beginning to fall. My Poetry Kitchen class is full (actually too full, amazingly). I've got so much work looming. But for the moment I will idle, watching the families hurry by, watching the songbirds strip the last of the berries from the bushes. I feel invisible. It is not so bad.

I've just woken up from a very disturbing dream-visitation featuring a Harmony friend who was murdered more than a decade ago. In my dream I had no recollection of her actual fate: we were just two people walking sociably around a fair together (the fairground was my Harmony land), talking and laughing and watching our neighbors bustle among rides and buildings. But as soon as I woke, I was appalled.

So now I am sitting here in my couch corner with a weight on my heart. Poor tragic Amy. Her children were also murdered, but in my dream there were no children, neither hers nor mine. It was just the two of us and, far off, a glimpse of her father talking to Tom. "Let's go see your dad," I remember suggesting. We tried to make our way through the crowd. But we never got there before I woke up.

I should write to her mother about this visitation. If Amy has come back from the dead, even so fleetingly, her mother must be told.

Well, that dream will color the day, no question. Tom is going to take our photos this morning so that we can send in our passports for renewal. We are planning a midday picnic and stroll on the Diamond Islands. But in the meantime Amy will walk beside me across my lost land, and her father will never get to see her.

Good morning from the chilly Alcott House, a little late because Chuck woke me by climbing on my head at 2 a.m. and I ended up downstairs on the couch trying to recoup my lost hours . . . successfully, as it happened. Once we settled onto the couch, the kitten for some reason became docile and let me fall asleep and stay that way till 6:30. So I am well rested in a non-sequential way, thanks to the no-pressures of a Sunday morning.

It is the last day of August. Outside the sun is awake and shining vigorously, and 50-degree air creeps through the window I left open in the living room last night. My feet are cold, and Chuck's paws are cold on my neck, and if I had any sense I'd close that window. But the crisp freshness is such an uplift after months of limp heat. Cold feet are the price to pay for this clean sharp swirl, with its hint of winter and new apples.

Yesterday turned out to be a kitchen day. I made refrigerator pickles with sliced young cucumbers, a handful of shredded cabbage, and a few slivers of red onion. I processed green beans for the freezer. I marinated a lamb loin in white wine, garlic, lovage, thyme, and oregano. For dinner I seared the lamb, served it with caramelized Vidalia onions and fresh mint; potatoes roasted with sage and olive oil; and a tomato, basil, garlic, and breadcrumb salad. I baked chocolate-chip scones for dessert. Summer at its finest.

Today I'll cut another few herb bouquets for drying. I'll simmer a batch of tomatoes for sauce. I may process kale or chard for the freezer. It's so pleasant to spend morning hours in my pretty kitchen, so pleasant to come in from the garden, bowls piled high with produce.

As I worked yesterday, I thought about my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class--began puzzling out various scenarios for prompts and conversations, trying them out on myself, imagining them in the minds of participants. I got notice of another signup last night, meaning that there are now only two slots left. Clearly changing the date solved my slow registration problem, and I am only too glad to stop beating myself up for focusing on a topic that few people seemed to care about. This would have been my first class failure, and naturally I was prepared to excoriate myself. Fortunately I can now put that project off for another day.

Update: Now there's just ONE space left in the long-poem class. Make it yours?

After discussion, I have changed the dates of my upcoming Poetry Kitchen class on Whitman and the long poem. The original October date was a sticking point for several interested people, so the first weekend is now November 1 and 2; the second remains November 15 and 16. Already I've had a flurry of new sign-ups, and there are currently just three spaces left: grab one while you can.

I'm very happy to be home with Tom for this three-day weekend. Last year at this time I was in New York--my unknowing final sight of Ray, a big Manhattan blow-out meal, a Mets game, my son's engagement. The visit was crowded and expensive and momentous, and next Labor Day will be even more so: we'll be in Chicago with hordes of family and friends for the wedding. So this time around I am ready for the not-momentous: an unhurried holiday at home with my beloved. Our only plan is to take the ferry out to Great Diamond at low tide, probably on Monday, so we can walk across the sandbar to Little Diamond and find a picnic spot in some quiet beach nook.

Yesterday I finished moving firewood into the basement, and now the cellar is swept, the logs are stacked and tidy, the kindling is stowed, and I am basking in the glow of accomplishment. The wood is in: there's so much satisfaction in that small dry sentence. Let the darkness creep forward! Let sleet clatter at the panes! The lamps are lit, and the wood is in.

And we got our first steady rain yesterday, a cool autumn rain, hinting at sweaters and socks and couch blankets and hot tea and tomato sauce simmering in the kitchen. For dinner I made bluefish en papillote, steaming the fillets with black beans, shredded cabbage, and sprigs of thyme; serving them with freshly made salsa and a salad of cucumbers and green beans. I played a My Bloody Valentine album and thought sentimentally of the time my boys and I were car-shopping in Bangor, and we test-drove a car we couldn't afford and drove it around the mall roads while blasting My Bloody Valentine songs on the stereo. Once Ray went to a My Bloody Valentine show and reported that it was "too loud"--a real accomplishment by the band, I'd say, given Ray's lifetime devotion to raucous rock shows.

I got up too early this morning, thanks to pesty Chuck. But that's nothing new. Though I may dream of sleeping late, I hardly ever do. Now he's folded himself into the gap between the back of the couch and my shoulder, wedged in, purring like a pressure cooker, pressing his cheek against mine or patting me with a tiny soft paw. Little Chuck is such a romantic.

On the coffee table: Ruden's Plath study, Lahiri's Whereabouts, Whitman's collected works. An almost-finished book of very hard crossword puzzles. A history of indigenous America, a New Yorker. An empty white cup and saucer. On the mantle, a pewter cup overflowing with sweet peas, a stoneware vase of dahlias and cosmos. Outside: pink-tinged daylight and the clonk of black walnuts dropping from the tree onto my neighbor's junk car.

This is a long note. I seem to have contracted logorrhea overnight. I will release you from my sentences. I hope you get a chance today to enjoy your own.

Little Chuck's debut with the poets went swimmingly. He enjoyed a novelty pen and a notebook with ribbon markers. He climbed into book bags. He submitted happily to doting and cuddling. He claimed his own chair in the circle, then fell asleep in it.

Often I've wondered if, morally, I should have adopted a more difficult-to-place animal: an older cat, a shyer or more anxious one. But it is so gratifying to have a pet who easily dispenses charm and cheer amid a clutter of guests. Like Ruckus before him (though in different ways), Chuck is good at a party. Really, I don't know why I should feel guilty for choosing to adopt a well-adjusted kitten. It's not like this one had an easy start, given his hoarder background. I've also read that shelters sometimes have a hard time placing black cats. So maybe I did him a good turn by taking him in, and now he is doing us a good turn by being such a sweet and sociable pal. Whatever the morals of the case, he lives here now, and we're glad to have him.

So now it's Friday--recycling-truck day, washing-the-sheets day, finishing-the-firewood-chore day. I wrote a couple of drafts last night that I want to inspect this morning. I have friends' poems to read and the book about Plath to pore over. I'll go for a walk. We'll eat bluefish for dinner, and freshly picked green beans, and homemade ice cream, and we'll play cards and listen to the Sox versus the Pirates, and we'll be happy about the long weekend ahead. With luck the sound of rain will lull us to sleep.

I am feeling so grateful this morning for the small and not-so-small gifts. A houseful of friends! A funny kitten! A partner who is so pleased that I have friends, who enjoys the sound of our chatter, who says, "Tell them to come any time." Firewood stacked, fat tomatoes in a bowl, books on the table, a warm arm around me at night and a kitten tucked under my chin. Oh, the world, the world. So terrifying, so beloved.