December Dreams,Work, and Play

December 9

Thanks to Sarah's mom Jan for passing on this picture of Joel playing with Sarah's little first cousin once removed.

It has been an intense period of work for me. Part of the intensity is dealing with different administrators and teachers. I’m doing the school in Mendham that I’ve visited several years in a row, and this one works well because the teachers themselves bring me in as an author and teaching writer to supplement their realistic fiction unit. I've also got an adult ed class Madison, my usual two NYU classes in the evening, and making a double day yesterday, on top of having to go into New York to teach at night, I had a day at the Newark Museum with the Jersey City teachers. It’s great to be part of the museum, but it’s requiring a lot of thinking on my feet as the plans change radically session to session, and I spent a lot of time over the week-end making little booklet of Asian literature to go with the art materials. I’m also signed on to write/edit for them, too, and probably need to cut something out this spring to make room for it. I like each thing I do, but there is also work for the Coalition and Ethical Culture and dinner to make the nights I’m home, and we're out of this and that from the grocery store and out of underwear. I feel energetic and productive, but also scattered by the different people I work with. I get days or at least mornings to write, sometimes, but no real days off. No boredom, and much drawing myself up like an actor, deep breathing for the performance to come

I had a dream of deer. I was walking up on the hill in East Shinnston behind the houses, and I was on this side of the fence with small brushy trees. On the other side was field, and six deer started and ran, some does with fawns, also yearlings, whitetailing it over the rolls and swells of the hill. And then directly ahead of me, on my side of the fence, was a big bodied buck like the only one I saw in the back yard this year, silver blue dense fur, thick neck, fine looking animal, and he faced me, and I assumed would then run, but charged me instead, and I held my ground, and it was a feint,as he reached me, he got smaller, melted into air, or passed me by. I marveled at the lack of fear.