First Impressions

So good to get home to a quiet ridge and not a person in sight. I stopped in town, for whiskey and tobacco. Drove home in nine hours, but that included a couple of stops; a museum outside of Canton and a stop to watch some birds wheeling about. I have to think about everything and unwind. Came home on secondary roads and avoided large towns, I did drive through Edinboro, on the way up, and Lancaster, on the way back, to admire the brick-work. Lovely. I don't have any lost time to make up for, it's all right in front of me. I had some great students and the time, after hours, was like a graduate seminar course, Phil and I discussing dear sweet Emily. The porch people were swiveling in their chairs, as if they were watching tennis match. Wonderful conversations. Living the life I do, it was like cramming two years of socialization into three-and-a-half days. I was so exhausted that I didn't finish my first drink and smoked only a single cigaret before I crashed. It was 87 degrees inside when I got home, and Black Dell, under her extended contract, would have refused to operate anyway. When I turned her on this morning, she was cranky, and acted as if she didn't know what she was doing. If I had left her on, she probably could have written paragraphs for me while I was gone. The faculty readings were great, and certainly one of the best audiences imaginable. I fell in love with a young poet and she deigned to chat with me a couple of times. There's an implied intimacy in a gathering like this. At Diana's cottage on Lake Erie, where she and I retired after the long farewells, we realized we were both dead in the water; she immediately went for a nap, and I sat on the bluff above the lake and read Raymond Carver. The stories didn't hold up for me. There was an eagle (yes, Christine, they follow me around), and later the sun setting over water shot up dark rays. There was an alley under the second story breeze-way that connected the annex from the main hotel, and I'd go down there for a last cigaret, late at night. Met several of the staff. Alexis asked me to read her a paragraph and I read her a piece about the fox. The next night she showed up with a friend and asked me to read again. They were both writing majors, going into MFA programs, and couldn't afford the Festival, needed to work for dollars. I talked with them several times, and when I'd pass them, when we were all at work, we'd address each other by name, and she'd poke a workmate, I could see her mouth the words ---that's the cool guy--- and we'd go about our business. The fog on the lake was spectacular. I noticed the Venturi Effect everywhere, buildings packed together and walkways and alleys, and always the breeze off the water. The breeze off the water and the lingering scent of people that didn't want to smell, awkwardly, as if they had been doing anything. Frankly, I loved it. I wanted to hug a girl that was wearing Tommy Girl, but I refrained in time. I chatted with an older woman, about the original Shalimar, before the synthetics, and I almost went home with her, to look at the original bottles; but I was needed elsewhere to mediate a discussion about the modern American poetry canon. Back into real time, I have to sling-blade a path to the outhouse, then clip away the blackberry canes that block all access, so I can, at least, limp to my Jeep without feeling like a stuck pig on the way to be butchered. Bleeding from a thousand cuts. Fucking blackberry. If I should ever have times to sort things out. I don't usually remember my dreams, for me the scene opens with a stylus, oak-gall ink, parchment or vellum. We'll talk about this later, where you are, or where I might be. Thunder storms. I have to go.