I�m just going to make this a quickie here on diaryland. I�ve got about a million years of work to do today. To do today. To do today. That�s awfully fun to say. All together now, every body (and now I�ve got John Lennon�s voice in my head, from �All You Need Is Love��is that right? John Lennon says that, right?).

TO DO TODAY.

I�ve been taking long afternoon hikes at the lake and still I finish before the sun sets and it�s not even daylight savings time yet (or the end of daylight savings?). It�s coming up though. I could hike 10 miles a night with the new times. Probably I won�t do that. But I could. It used to soothe me to calculate how much I could walk a week and then a month and then a season (can�t do as much in the winter can I�have to factor in miles missed for darkness) and then a year. I�ve no great curiosity about the world. I can�t remember anything I read and I can�t get interested in anything without a story or without delectable language and I can�t, definitely not, teach to save my life (I�ve tried, but I�m a-drowning, surely I am). I think in circles. I have to think up new patterns and calculations to distract myself. If the brain doesn�t have a beautiful day or doesn�t have some math to do the brain gets all eaten up by the great monster of despair (who I like to keep chained up in a back room, and starving, but she�s strong and sometimes escapes and then likes to eat up parts of the brain because keeping her starving makes her damned hungry but also weaker than she normally is and all the forest walking makes me a little bit stronger than I normally am so I can wrestle her right back into that dank and windowless little room. Well, it's not actually windowless. I put a window in recently. I think it calms her.)

Yeah well. Here�s a poem:

Dance in the Dark
Irving Feldman

Circles, doubles back, circles, knocks again.
Can't believe it: this she means, actually means
to fight him for this body she has,
unfairly, the advantage of inhabiting.
And so ungrateful for the use of it
he's granted her � and pretty much rent-free!
Still, he's willing to share � take turns, say.
And it's not as if she's got to be in
whenever he comes around calling.
She can just go somewhere for a while,
have herself a nice, little vacation
from standing guard behind those hazel eyes.
Oh, and yes, of course, he'll straighten up after.
Place will look more or less like new, really!
Bet she wouldn't even know he's been there.
Mean no harm. Tell her that. Whatever it takes.
Maybe blow some bucks. Help her see it this way.

He's stymied? And she? She's perplexed, suspecting�

Yeah and also I�m going to have some breakfast and a smoke. And also I like to look at pictures of Buster Keaton. And also I�m going to see a taping of This American Life on May 10. I used to have a crush on Ira Glass because of these pictures:

but now I don�t anymore because he�s so damned precious. But I love that show in spite of all the posing.

I�m going to go away now and do my work and I won�t be back until it�s done. Farewell my compadres and my faithful little words and this lovely time, fare thee well all the day long.