Motion and Stillness

Last few days rabidly social: two book signings, Grace Paley annual reading, Bagel Bards, evening with Brooklkine poet friends. Next Monday we head up to the Adirondacks for a Christmas week. Almost always, as I step out of the car I feel layers of tension melt away. Ah, a life of just looking around at snow in trees, mountains coming in and out of clouds, snow falling, the excellent company of my sister-in-law, who is the very spirit of the mountains.

Off the Grid matters move like a string of train cars in a switching yard -- a few steps forward, a few back, big clanks, big silences in between. We're still short the money we need to launch the contest, and every week the complications of the project reveal themselves. But I still expect to announce our contest this spring. I'm very set on building something tht, if anything is, might still be around in another ten years.

Bright moments: how alive Grace remains in her work. And, ah, scenes, inhaling their neighbor's honey-cured bacon through a hole in the wall, making her scatter breakfast with Bob "more grand."

Listening to a former president of Smith introduce the reading by our friend (and OTG board member) Gwen Jensen-- and find her so down to earth. And Keven Bowen's easy, egoless eloquence in his intro to the Payley reading. And hearing Gwen read from poems in which Tam was deeply involved, and Allen West, our most recent OTG poet, read poems that Tam and I saw through to a book.