stamps & fishes & words, oh my!

a surprise package containing: the most gorgeous chinese stamps, the perfect-sized pages for recording lines of poetry, a polaroid of the sun & ocean (a polaroid folks!)*, a tiny spoon which will soon be covered in honey, the sparkler of a new book (which looks fantastically fragmented), & the feathered lines of a calligraphy notebook!

oh how the glittering contents were well worth the wait.** it truly amazes me how we come to be connected with strangers (who then become unstrangered), through this virtual space of blogging. and isn't it equally amazing how we can physically connect with people through something so simple as the post? this shimmering package swooped me up into full sunlight in the middle of a dreary and stressful fall. thanks jenna! you are, yourself, quite the light-filled wonder!

*no one has ever gifted me a polaroid. & this one made me a little teary. i love the idea of the bleached sun & salty air that someone else has experienced.

**i get that it is masochistic to receive something in the mail and force yourself not to open it, but a gal needs a carrot sometimes to get through her grading.

valentined mail

while i was away in mythaca this weekend (where i attended a poetry reading, caught up & drank bourbon with this amazing lady) a little package arrived for me. a package sent from my valentine! & though i promised myself no opening until after grading (3 papers left, one 2-hour class to go) i can hardly contain myself. soon soon soon. & then i will post some peaks!

(image via here}

swamp things.

anyone who tells you that your first semester teaching a new class is going to be "fine" should probably be kicked in the shins. numerous times. i'm closing down on week 6 of the quarter. & i'm a complete swamp--sticky with essays & an apartment exposed to the tornado (& subsequent debris) of no-time-to-deal. Z has been a rockstar with cooking & cleaning & i have been...a swamp thing. (albeit a functional teacher swamp!). because we're commuting this semester (Z lives in ithaca three days a week, where he's a student) everything seems so much harder to focus on. when you don't see your man all that often, what is a clean bathroom anyway?! the truth is, next quarter will be better. easier. less numbingly fast! & i will be a better writer. will find less snags to my must-write-more-than-one-night-a-week plans. will remember that there is nothing like the feeling of finishing a piece. not even the feeling of that piece getting accepted. (though they are close! & i have had a sweet streak of acceptances in the past month). our scanner should be up and running soon(ly). then there will be wild apple polaroids & apartment snapshots. i swear. for now, a sneak-peak.

p.s. this shot is not photoshopped.