April 13, 14
In the morning the flakes elephantine, great floating orbs ushered feather-soft to the grass. The sky here never fully committed, grey with streaks of blue rayed through with sun scrawled out over the bay. A cold morning, bitter to the skin. Along the beach, Willa in her sprints, the winds pierced my layers, bone-chill, wet-bone. A different cold along a shoreline. & now, late afternoon, thinnest snow, an afterthought of snow, miniscule punctured dots that strain the eye in their regard.
A quiet day, unsurprisingly. Touched up resumes. Spent some time at the library, had an odd letter from the chair of the English Dept. up in Fairbanks about my application in the adjunct pool, warning me off its doldrums, telling me I’d be better suited seeking a full-time position. I told him to give me one, then, or else trust that I was aware of what being an adjunct entailed. Good will can appear confounded, & living here how & why I do has lent me perhaps a touch more gumption vis-à-vis communication of that sort, anyway. Probably ill-advised, but it touched a nerve. Took out Don Quixote & will try it fully in English for the first time. The pet store for bully sticks. The general store for a sandwich & another round of Deadwood episodes. Back home, revised a bit on Keats, gearing towards exegesis proper. An uneventful report, I’m afraid. Even Willa is bored of it, curled on the couch & asleep.
Likely the novelty of arrival has withered & left me the plain & gaping question of the everyday. Now, a bit of Simic comes to mind. “There’s a kind of responsibility here, care towards the actual, the sheer wonder of dailiness, the manner of our being in the world.” He writes about poems, but he may as well write about our regard for the recovery of sunrise each day. I remind myself. Novelty in transit is one thing—when I find it faded anymore I am left palms up & shoulders shrugging. I don’t know what to do with the notion of longevity; I am ill-educated in the vocabularies of the sedentary. Honestly, I must actively recall my feet firmly to the floor, remind myself that this is not a layover but a life, not a whistle stop but an intentioned relocation. My groundlessness has burgeoned so that I can barely fathom a chthonic pull, a tended soil. Something like air rushing always through me, gust cutting hard through branch & bough, & this, the whistling you hear. Settle, quicken quiet. Breathe & be. I keep inside to stay myself from rustling off.
***
My sleep these days exhausting, an ether-world from which I groggily & barely arise each morning. Ten hours here, nine there, an alarm now to get me on my feet when I’d prefer, leaden-boned, glossy-eyed, heft like a hangover from sober passage, not a drop to drink. I lend myself little room for the justifications of sentiment—but then, nothing is sovereign to it. Trying to dissemble my days in the garb of busy-ness or duty proves only valuable if I remain honest with myself throughout, emotionally & otherwise. I am, these past couple of days, inclined to feel the weight of it upon me, contrary my will. Then I think, how could I not be floored to some degree? How could I let a penumbra of sadness’ attendant torpor spur my impatience? Better than umbra, better than envelopment sheer & absolute. I permit myself some time lost to it. I permit myself the flushed tone of each ache without the quick impulse to smother it in this or that pursuit. There is a self in me at odds with progress, & a self that would put it to swift course. I wrestle, Jacob, me too. It seems the time for it to catch up, to presence itself most clearly, the inertia of the move faded, the familiarity with my surroundings more complete, the sense of urgency now a remembered thing. Now, the thetic turn. Why I am here to begin with, & how I weigh the absences about me. How she is not here, & how I am to be. A heavy door hung upon a heavy hinge.
A quiet day, unsurprisingly. Touched up resumes. Spent some time at the library, had an odd letter from the chair of the English Dept. up in Fairbanks about my application in the adjunct pool, warning me off its doldrums, telling me I’d be better suited seeking a full-time position. I told him to give me one, then, or else trust that I was aware of what being an adjunct entailed. Good will can appear confounded, & living here how & why I do has lent me perhaps a touch more gumption vis-à-vis communication of that sort, anyway. Probably ill-advised, but it touched a nerve. Took out Don Quixote & will try it fully in English for the first time. The pet store for bully sticks. The general store for a sandwich & another round of Deadwood episodes. Back home, revised a bit on Keats, gearing towards exegesis proper. An uneventful report, I’m afraid. Even Willa is bored of it, curled on the couch & asleep.
Likely the novelty of arrival has withered & left me the plain & gaping question of the everyday. Now, a bit of Simic comes to mind. “There’s a kind of responsibility here, care towards the actual, the sheer wonder of dailiness, the manner of our being in the world.” He writes about poems, but he may as well write about our regard for the recovery of sunrise each day. I remind myself. Novelty in transit is one thing—when I find it faded anymore I am left palms up & shoulders shrugging. I don’t know what to do with the notion of longevity; I am ill-educated in the vocabularies of the sedentary. Honestly, I must actively recall my feet firmly to the floor, remind myself that this is not a layover but a life, not a whistle stop but an intentioned relocation. My groundlessness has burgeoned so that I can barely fathom a chthonic pull, a tended soil. Something like air rushing always through me, gust cutting hard through branch & bough, & this, the whistling you hear. Settle, quicken quiet. Breathe & be. I keep inside to stay myself from rustling off.
***
My sleep these days exhausting, an ether-world from which I groggily & barely arise each morning. Ten hours here, nine there, an alarm now to get me on my feet when I’d prefer, leaden-boned, glossy-eyed, heft like a hangover from sober passage, not a drop to drink. I lend myself little room for the justifications of sentiment—but then, nothing is sovereign to it. Trying to dissemble my days in the garb of busy-ness or duty proves only valuable if I remain honest with myself throughout, emotionally & otherwise. I am, these past couple of days, inclined to feel the weight of it upon me, contrary my will. Then I think, how could I not be floored to some degree? How could I let a penumbra of sadness’ attendant torpor spur my impatience? Better than umbra, better than envelopment sheer & absolute. I permit myself some time lost to it. I permit myself the flushed tone of each ache without the quick impulse to smother it in this or that pursuit. There is a self in me at odds with progress, & a self that would put it to swift course. I wrestle, Jacob, me too. It seems the time for it to catch up, to presence itself most clearly, the inertia of the move faded, the familiarity with my surroundings more complete, the sense of urgency now a remembered thing. Now, the thetic turn. Why I am here to begin with, & how I weigh the absences about me. How she is not here, & how I am to be. A heavy door hung upon a heavy hinge.
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