9:00 p.m. Weary. I've mostly been reading; just not up for much else, though the work is starting to pile up again. Finished the Mistry book yesterday -- very good, and a fascinating plot structure, but so much sadness. I know there's a lot of sadness in the world, but sometimes I just don't want to write or read about it.
Then today I read Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sange, which was a very good novel about cloning and the end of the world, and yet again, so much sadness. I'm not saying it's a tragedy (or the Mistry, for that matter)...just that you go through a lot of tragedy in the process of reading the book. I know that pain and joy sometimes to hand in hand...but I just don't want to believe that you must have equal portions of both (or more pain, for that matter).
And now I'm most of the way through Nalo Hopkinson's latest, Midnight Robber, which I am enjoying immensely as I knew I would, but I am just hoping that there isn't too much more pain coming up -- Nalo isn't an author who pulls punches either. But since she's a friend of mine, maybe I can bully her into making her next book a happy one.... no, probably not.
Ah, I'm just mopey today. Kevin's not back yet from his conference from England and it's been almost two weeks and we don't get much more time together before he goes off to Chicago and I stay here and I'm both missing him and missing him in advance. I know it's the right thing career-wise for us both -- and for us, career means more than just a job to pay the rent; it's our work and our love and a fair bit of our lives. I've always known there was the possibility that his work or mine would separate us; they're so integral to who we are, that I don't think we could sacrifice the work for love and remain the kind of person that the other had fallen in love with. But I'd hoped that we wouldn't have to confront that, that circumstances wouldn't ask this.
Ah well. The doctorate is right for me, I'm pretty sure, and there's no school in Chicago offering one in creative writing. And this post-doc at U. Chicago is right for him -- I'm so proud of him for getting it. We'll see what the next few years have in store for us, and see what we have and who we are at the end of them.
10:00 p.m. Wrote a poem, the second of this year.
invocation i will go up into the mountains the empty spaces you will go down where the wind to the city shuddering a small room a through quaking single chair a aspen screech of is the only police or conversation ambulance and occasional the air so clear gunshots and bright at dawn the waves against the sky every the city shore shade of gold the temptation the peaks sharp to walk beside like knives them in the dark the wind cold at night and startling when your mind is racing in the silence poems are the constant writing themselves thudding on crisp waves lines bodies white sheets exploding on the pages i remember the city you remember me.