"For so much of love
one of the principals is missing,
it�s no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick
with both."

"I don�t care what anybody thinks or writes, I don�t care if
my friend who writes poems is a beautiful fake, like a planetar-
ium ceiling, I want to hold my life in my arms as easily as my
body will hold forever the silence for which the mouth slowly
opens."

I�m reading William Matthews again today, today when everything is ending. He shocks me every time, having written down these words that are so familiar and so far away. He makes me lovesick, does William Matthews.

I just finished decorating the library Christmas tree. Ugh. I�m no fan of that sort of holiday stuff. Fakery is what that stuff is�ugly little round balls and lights that look a little bit pretty from far away but are hideous and disintegrating close up. Ugh a lot.

My students are slowly turning in their final papers and I am a little bit sad about this semester�it never seemed to go quite well. Nothing for it now, is there. I have endless reams of papers to mark up before the week�s end. I think I need to get some brew this evening to get me in the right mood for this.

I am also a little bit sad that Christmas is only about two weeks away�I�m not ready for a holiday just yet. I need more space and time to grow into it. I have told Sue and Blythe that I�ll be heading up to DC for New Year�s. I�m not sure I have any great desire to do this, but they are my friends and friends sometimes trump solitude, no matter how desperately needed that solitude may be.

I am adrift and aimless now. I forget my plans and my desires now. My hands are chapped by this cold and by my bordering-on-obsessive hand washing. I hate lotion the way I hate baths, but there�s nothing to do but put it on day in day out in the winter times.

It�s nearing 5 and I don�t want to go home and I don�t know why. I think I dread this desolation (oh the melodrama of despair) on days like this, more than usual. I know what makes this easier, I know how to find peace, but it�s work, finding comfort alone. I just wish I�d done a better job these past months, wish I�d paid more attention to things.

Right. 5 o�clock and I�m off.