Digging It Up

This past weekend, we broke ground on Williams' new sustainable garden. Where there once was nothing but a swath of lawn, there are now twelve raised beds ready for their planting. There's also a guardian made of unearthed stones (Zed, who has a delicately balanced stick for his arms), and a sweet deep pile of darkest mulch. I made a new friend, Zeta, age 8, and acquired a few responsibilities. Every Thursday, I'm the camp composter, which means hauling bins from the dining hall to a coop of wood-and-wire that banks the edge of campus. The neighbors have complained. Not about the smell, but about the possibility of raccoons. There's a fear that these "masked bandits of the night" will disrupt the heretofore peaceful life of their kitty. I say, if the raccoon wants to eat the cat, he'll eat the cat, and my banana peels with neither deter or encourage him.

Saturday is the official ribbon-cutting on the garden, and we're hoping the newly installed college president will attend. There will be work parties every Saturday til the end of the school year, and I imagine I'll be watering and tending straight through the summer. It feels good to do something with my muscles and my hands, particularly something beneficial. As far as I know, running on a treadmill hasn't benefited my community -- though that could be changing, as some of the gym machines are being converted to produce sustainable energy for the college. Egads, Williams, you get the gold star. Anyway, for all the days when my only discernible product is a lot of ideas, I feel pretty good about greening my thumb. Also looking forward to Wendell Berry's visit at the end of this month. Part of the event is a dinner at the president's house (ours, not Obama's, alas) and I've been invited. Serendipity, I think. He's speaking primarily about farming, but I'm particularly interested by his ideas on "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community," presented in a really excellent essay. Some students have formed a discussion group on Christianity and sexuality. Wonder if Wendell could be bribed to attend?

Also in the land of ideas, I've spent much of today and yesterday plugging through a piece of fiction writing that I've had in mind for a while. I mistakenly offered to present my revisions to my class on Monday, not realizing I'd have to turn the story in for their edits today or tomorrow. But I had a very long productive reading with Eben, who in addition to his other attributes is a brilliant editor, and I feel like I'm on the right track. It's exhilarating, and may be resuscitating my feeble desire to do a creative thesis. But I've got a year (in Paris!) to think about that.

Had a three-hour coffee date with a new friend. We're thinking of meeting up to write and bounce syllables off each others' heads. She says back in Arizona, she never shut up, but at Williams, she barely speaks. I might not have known her at all, but she was part of an ethnographic theater piece and told a great story about her grandma. We're becoming friends and I'm glad of it. Also, today, while composting, I had a long conversation with the founder of this fledgling garden movement, who took Four Years Off Of School, and is thus a graduating 27-year old. Little interest as he has in cultivating friendships with 19-year old sophomores, it was an interesting connection to make. A pocket of time with a good story in it. I strain so often to make things happen, it's nice when for once they simply just do. In the good insights column, a gem from my mother: "I think maybe you are putting too much pressure on ... everything."

So I'm lightening up as the day winds down. My friend has a thesis for me to help edit, but she also has popcorn and she's a real fun broad. She'll come back fresh from the Brahms Requiem, and I'll keep trying to make sense of her semicolons. Those are all good things, yeah?

Oh, also, I got mentioned honorably for a poem, for the Bullock Prize at Williams. I'm pretty excited, because this happened last year too, but this time, the guy gave us comments (different judge). Mine, he said, was among the weirdest of the entries. I figured, since I'm already self-indulgent cause I have a blog, I'd post the thing as well. But I've also been coming to believe, that if I want to write, and I do, I can't keep thinking it's shameful to share it, or somehow presumptuous, or rude. It might just be a nice thing - I know I like it when friends show their work to me!

Christmas Letter
Friends of friends and friends, and the streets
We found in our address books:
There is snow here,
There is ice,
There is an ache in staring too long
At the ground.
In our house, we hang heavy,
Our own weight heavy in our palms.
Peter painted his room last fall,
Sarah is sneaking some boy up to hers,
There never seems space enough,
And Jim is dying, Jim is always half-gone.
It's been a hard three months - prickly and soured.
The kitchen floods with light since we cut the big tree down.
Jim swears it was an oak; you'd think for twenty years we'd know.
But Kate's more right than any of us,
And we're waiting on Jim, always waiting.
The wallpaper started peeling
With our winter skins,
The house has ruddy bones, pink puffs of fat.
It's nearing Christmas, which we'd all forgotten,
And Jim says hi between hammers of rain,
with a shake - with a shake of his hat.