Cloud At Last

Yesterday was rainy and cold.  I woke up, very early as usual, before the alarm, and in the dark, thanks to the time change earlier this week, and I just didn't want to go out. "Hmm," I thought, dialogically* in bed in my head, "I seem to have caught some of my dad's malaise."

*dialogically: coined word meaning 1) talking to oneself in one's head 2) talking illogically to oneself in one's head or out loud and/or 3) diabolically, or 4) dialing oneself up on the phone in one's head when one can't remember any other number, especially if one still has a black rotary phone bedside

The day before yesterday I had visited my dad to take to take him Solace as he was suffering from 1) a sinus condition and 2) a general malaise, partly induced by images and news of Japan and partly from finishing Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

My dad, a very strong and smart man, is also a sensitive and fragile man. After 9/11 he was troubled by nightmares of people jumping from burning buildings. Sometimes he was one of them. So he's taking Japan to heart, too, as so many of us are.

But I did go out yesterday, early and on time, and it turned out to be my last day on my new, perfect job, which is as it should be, as this was by nature temporary and part-time, and maybe my favorite job** ever (!), so my morning sadness seemed a bit premonitory in retrospect, as premonitions...are.

**as International Woman of Mystery

It may not surprise you that I am reading Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, which is 1) nonlinear 2) interrupted 3) soon to be a major motion picture.

So now I need a new job and have started/continued to think about college teaching again, which has so many joys to it, and summers off, but tends to drain me of lots of the energy I need for writing. Shared dilemma of so many writer/teachers.

In my stumbling around to get through this hump of the week, I also found another Cloud Atlas, with a World War II setting, by Liam Callanan. Everything's coming up Japanese weather balloons.

Finally, today, there were good things! Blue sky, faint clouds. And I posted the new poetry feature, by Risa Denenberg, at Escape Into Life. I find her spare lyricism bracing and healing, wounded and fragile, all at the same time.

And the images, stark but beautiful, are overhead views quite different from the overhead views we have been seeing of Japan.

I can't explain how this all fits together, but you see it does. And I do sort of understand why I kept mistyping and got Cloud Atlast.  But really I'm glad to see the sun at last!