Summer: Fri. 6/26
Today in excavation, I went through two boxes of files from graduate school. That's right: a program whose coursework I completed in 2003. That's seventeen years ago. I kept the papers I wrote but otherwise stacked up all the handouts from courses like Technologies of Heartbreak, Eloquence of Objects, Reviewing, Twentieth-Century Literary Nonfiction, The Literary Representation of Social Reality, Arts of Ecstasy, Writing America, Conspiracy & Paranoia, and Poets on Poets. The stack comes up past my knee.
I also found workshop notes from the seven-page short story that eventually--many, many years later--became the 250-page Each Vagabond by Name.
This cleanout is a personal reckoning and an eerie experiment in time travel. It all ends up in bags by the curb, bags and bags and bags, but all that is just the runoff of many many experiences and changes and mistakes and wrong turns and wonder and serendiptous events. None of that disappears, even though I can safely say I don't need the three-feet-high stack of xeroxes anymore and--to be honest--haven't needed them for decades.
Besides these hours spent in existential confrontation, I also had a normal day with the kids. Lucia rode bikes with two friends, but we called her inside when they wanted to ride Flash Riders in the driveway; we're just not at the playdate stage yet. Greta and I played Quirkle and read books on the porch. Lucia worked on a story she's writing. Greta organized some of her drawings. Andrew played in the yard with the kids and Farrah while I did a virtual book event.
What We're Reading
Margo: The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell
Andrew: The Whiskey Rebellion
Lucia: Charmed (#2 in the Fairy Tale Reform School Series; she read #1 so fast I didn't even have time to get it into this blog)
Greta: School for Good and Evil #6
I also found workshop notes from the seven-page short story that eventually--many, many years later--became the 250-page Each Vagabond by Name.
This cleanout is a personal reckoning and an eerie experiment in time travel. It all ends up in bags by the curb, bags and bags and bags, but all that is just the runoff of many many experiences and changes and mistakes and wrong turns and wonder and serendiptous events. None of that disappears, even though I can safely say I don't need the three-feet-high stack of xeroxes anymore and--to be honest--haven't needed them for decades.
Besides these hours spent in existential confrontation, I also had a normal day with the kids. Lucia rode bikes with two friends, but we called her inside when they wanted to ride Flash Riders in the driveway; we're just not at the playdate stage yet. Greta and I played Quirkle and read books on the porch. Lucia worked on a story she's writing. Greta organized some of her drawings. Andrew played in the yard with the kids and Farrah while I did a virtual book event.
What We're Reading
Margo: The Falling Woman by Richard Farrell
Andrew: The Whiskey Rebellion
Lucia: Charmed (#2 in the Fairy Tale Reform School Series; she read #1 so fast I didn't even have time to get it into this blog)
Greta: School for Good and Evil #6
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