94. Louise Gluck, poet

Witchgrass

Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much

don’t bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything—

as we both know,

if you worship

one god, you only need

One enemy—

I’m not the enemy.

Only a ruse to ignore

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure. One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you can’t rest until

you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion—

It was not meant

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

I don’t need your praise

to survive. I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

The Wild Iris

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little.  And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure sea water.

93. Essays, part I

The other day an email appeared in my inbox heralding a weeklong event that I (sort of) participated in last year, and so I'm on the list for this year too, it seems. It's called "Essay Camp," and its on the Substack called "A Writer's Notebook" by Summer Brennan. The point being to write an essay over the next week. Simple, huh?

Yeah, sure.

Michel de Montaigne,
father of the essay

Summer writes this: "An essay is famously defined as 'an attempt.' That is the root of the word. It means to try—but try to do what? To understand, to clarify, to persuade, to compare, to connect, to remember, to preserve. An essay can be long or short, personal or impersonal. It can express a truth or explain a stance, introduce an idea or marry two seemingly unrelated ideas together. In that trying, the author’s thought process is often visible on the page. To write an essay is to reach for something, not so much to explain as to explore."

As so often, I take a look, and yes! these look like wonderful exercises. And as so often, I then wander on to some other distraction, thinking maybe I'll just collect all six or however many days' worth and then—one day when my slate is as clean as can be—sit down and really apply myself. 

Seventy-plus years on this planet, and I still have no self-awareness!

Anyway, the reason I'm writing all this today is to catalog the "exemplary essays" that Summer mentions at the end of each day's assignment. Reading essays, she points out, is a critical exercise as we tiptoe into the murky waters that are our own lives and try to make sense of what we find.

This is part I, presenting the first three days of "Essay Camp." I'll tackle the second half in a future post. And apologies to Summer for stealing wholesale. If you're interested in her Substack, you can find it here.

On day 1, it was "some familiar classics that show variety in length, subject, and style." I've read many of these, but they are all worth a revisit:

"Tiny Beautiful Things," by Cheryl Strayed, 896 words, 4 minute read
"The Death of the Moth," by Virginia Woolf, 1,175 words, 5 minutes
"A Good Café on the Place St-Michel," from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, 1,639 words, 6 minutes
"Me Talk Pretty One Day," by David Sedaris, 1,847 words, 9 minutes
"Shooting an Elephant," by George Orwell, 3,283 words, 12 minutes
"Night Walks," by Charles Dickens, 3,788 words, 14 minutes
"Goodbye to All That," by Joan Didion, about 4,000 words, 18 minutes
"Total Eclipse," by Annie Dillard, 5,589 words, 22 minutes
"Notes on 'Camp,'" by Susan Sontag, about 6,000 wordes, 24 minutes
"Equal in Paris," by James Baldwin, 6,775 words, 28 minutes
"The Fourth State of Matter," by Jo Ann Beard, about 7,200 words, 30 minutes
"Consider the Lobster," by David Foster Wallace, about 7,500 words, 32 minutes

Day 2

"Ghost Story," by Maggie Smith, 618 words, 2.5 minutes
"The Smoker," by Ottessa Moshfegh, 1,098 words, 4 minutes
"The Invitation," by Barry Lopez, 1,758 words, 7 minutes
"Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant," from Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, 1,673 words, 7 minutes
"Kevin Brazil," by Kevin Brazil, 3,090 woreds, 12 minutes
"On Keeping a Notebook," by Joan Didion, 3,052 words, 12 minutes
"Joy," by Zadie Smith, 2,868 words, 12 minutes
"The Youth in Asia," by David Sedaris, 3,294 words, 13 minutes
"The Terror of Love," by Samantha Irby, 3,570 words, 13 minutes
"A Toast Story," by John Gravois, 3,838 words, 15 minutes
"Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life," by Yiyun Li, 3,948 words, 15 minutes
"The Curse," by Alexander Chee, 4,924 words, 20 minutes
"My Instagram," by Dayna Tortorici, 8,323 words, 33 minutes

Day 3

"Things That Appear Ugly or Troubling but upon Closer Inspection Are Beautiful," by Gretchen Legler, 468 words, 2 minutes
"Love Songs: I'm Your Man," by Laurie Stone, 722 words, 3 minutes
"The Negreeting," in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, 722 words, 3 minutes
"Rape Joke," by Patricia Lockwood, 1,266 words, 5 minutes
"An Almanac of Birds," by Maria Popova, 2,141 words, 8 minutes
"Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over," by Sabrina Orah Mark, 1,627 words, 8 minutes
"Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk," by Katy Kelleher, 2,053 words, 8 minutes
"Quitting," by John Phipps, 2,226 words, 9 minutes
"What the Black Woman Thinks about Women's Lib," by Toni Morrison, 3,878 words, 15 minutes
"One Four Two Five Old Sunset Trail," by Joy Williams, 3,936 words, 16 minutes
"Welcome to Dog World," by Blair Braverman, 7, 485 words, 30 minutes

Even if I have to cattle-prod myself to sit down and write essays, it's theoretically quite possible to sit down and read them, and so get some inspiration. 

Part II will follow when Summer has finished presenting this iteration of "Essay Camp."

Book Report: On Beauty

6. Zadie Smith, On Beauty (2005) (3/24/26)

I enjoyed this book well enough. The writing itself is spectacular, and Smith has an amazing way with dialogue. She gives us all the trickiness of interpersonal relationships, whether that comes from the passage of time, differing philosophies of life, class and race disparities, or simply assumptions made. 

The story, which a NYT book review tells me is based loosely on E. M. Forster's Howards End (which I have not read), focuses on a family living in an upscale Boston neighborhood, where the father, 57-year-old Howard Belsey, is a tenureless art historian, white and British, who has recently cheated on his wife, Kiki, African-American and a nurse, less intellectual but certainly not stupid. They have three children, two in college, one still in high school but increasingly hanging out with some Haitian rights activists. Howard's rival, a Trinidadian scholar, comes to town, a visiting professor at Howard's Ivy League–ish college—they both study Rembrandt, drawing very different conclusions about his work, his intentions; and they occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum. This man, Monty, also has a wife and two children, all of whom are woven into the story. And there's a rapper who stumbles into this rarefied environment.

All of which are just some of the characters and details of a constantly shifting story of constantly shifting self-understandings and desires, of time passing and connections made and lost, of strivings and settlings and abandonments, of power plays and deep satisfactions and regrets. It's life.

When I say I enjoyed it "well enough," I'm not sure if I mean I wasn't quite in the mood for what amounts to a multiple-character study, that I would have appreciated a bit more of a plot, or a, I dunno, point? What I'm left with most is how accomplished the writing is, but the story itself is more like a kaleidoscope, giving me no fixed image. Except possibly the very end, where Howard is finally presenting his lecture that could, he hopes, win him tenure—only, in the confusion of reaching the venue late, he left his notes in the car. 

Howard pressed the red button again. A picture came up. He waited a minute and then pressed it once more. Another picture. He kept pressing. People appeared: angels and staalmeesters and merchants and surgeons and students and writers and peasants and kings and the artist himself. And the artist himself. And the artist himself. The man from Pomona began to nod appreciatively. Howard pressed the red button. He could hear Jack French saying to his eldest son, in his characteristically loud whisper: You see, Ralph, the order is meaningful. Howard pressed the red button. Nothing happened. He had come to the end of the line. He looked out and spotted Kiki, smiling into her lap. The rest of the audience were faintly frowning at the back wall. Howard turned his head and looked at the picture behind him.
     'Hendrickje Bathing, 1654,' croaked Howard and said no more.

     On the wall, a pretty, blousy Dutch woman in a simple white smock paddled in water up to her calves. Howard's audience looked at her and then at Howard and then at the woman once more, awaiting elucidation. The woman, for her part, looked away, coyly, into the water. She seemed to be considering whether to wade deeper. The surface of the water was dark, reflective—a cautious bather could not be certain of what lurked beneath. Howard looked at Kiki. In her face, his life. Kiki looked up suddenly at Howard—not, he thought, unkindly. Howard said nothing. Another silent minute passed. The audience began to mutter perplexedly. Howard made the picture larger on the wall as Smith had explained to him how to do. The woman's fleshiness filled the wall. He looked out into the audience once more and saw Kiki only. He smiled at her. She smiled. She looked away, but she smiled. Howard looked back at the woman on the wall, Rembrandt's love, Hendrickje. Though her hands were imprecise blurs, painted heaped on paint and roiled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety—chalky whites and lively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.

That's how the book ends: the final paragraphs. (It doesn't spoil anything—well, nothing important—to quote it.) It reminds me of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I likewise made my way through enjoying the writing but not quite sure what it all added up to—until the final page, which knocked me out it was so exquisite. This rich book might also transform in my mind from "good enough" to eternally memorable. I guess time will tell.

92. Toes

We took a walk this afternoon at one of our favorite dog-walk spots—only today, no dog. (Sad.) As we made our way back to the car we were walking on sandy trails, and I noticed some one-toed footprints. Horses. Which got us wondering what other one-toed beasts there are. 

Wikipedia to the rescue:

Horses, asses, and zebras, also rhinoceroses, also tapirs—three families, comprising 17 species—all belong to the order of ungulates known as Perissodactyla, meaning odd-toed. Meaning that these animals have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three or one of the original five. (Though tapirs have four toes in front, three in back, so they're a bit of an anomaly.)

The other order of (mostly) ungulates is the Artiodactyla, representing 270 species. Think pigs, peccaries, hippopotamuses, antelopes, deer, giraffes, camels, llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats, and cattle. Even the Cetaceae—dolphins and other toothed whales, baleen whales too (this blows my mind)—are sometimes placed in the Artiodactyla order of Euungulata. They don't even have toes! But they are closely related to hippos. Who knew.

Humans, may I remind you, are in the order Primates, 500 species strong. Our toes don't figure into that categorization. And the rest of the mammals? There are over 20 orders in all:
rodentia (representing 40% of all mammal species)
chiroptera (bats)
insectivores (moles, shrews, hedgehogs)
carnivora (dogs, cats, bears, raccoons, skunks, mongooses, weasels, and more)
lagomorphs (rabbits, hares, pikas)
proboscids (elephants)
pilosa (anteaters and sloths)
cingulata (armadillos)
sirenia (dugongs and manatees)
the marsupials: kangaroos, koalas, and wombats; opossums; bandicoots (three orders)
monotremes (platypus and echidnas)
and don't forget the pangolins, aardvarks, flying lemurs, and tree and elephant shrews

Sometimes I find it easier to try to puzzle out these various connections of our natural world than to try to make sense of human . . . what word do I want here? bullshit, malarkey, tragedy, stupidity, hubris, sad sad sad sadness. 

Maybe it's more convenient to parse a Grèvys zebra from a plains zebra, a chimpanzee from a bonobo. But shouldn't we be figuring out how to live human with human? 

91. Billionaires

I am (this is, I anticipate, going to be a bit of a disjointed rant) beside myself at the injustices of this country, this world, and the inequities, and the selfishness. Capitalism: I spit on it. It's just the new brand of feudalism—a few at the top, the rest of us below, getting stomped on. 

Not that I, personally, am getting stomped on—but my needs are modest. I managed to get born in an in-between moment when it was looking good for a middle class, when the rich weren't especially filthy. My husband worked a good job, and we managed to save up some. 

But what about the various Gens—X, Millennial, Z, Alpha, and now Beta: I see a lot of worrying about their futures. Justifiably, maybe. I don't know how you can actually make a career out of being an "influencer." But some seem to manage it. And hopefully real jobs will stay around.

Though the poor—there's never been a time without destitution. No matter the generation. Capitalism makes it hard to get anywhere. You've got to have serious breaks. Heaven forbid the government could help individuals find a decent life.

Anyway, yeah: tonight I got to thinking about all those billionaires. Careless, uncaring. What CAN they do with all that money? I honestly don't have a clue. How many yachts, helicopters, or private jets, never mind "homes," can one own?

As of March 2026, so Google AI tells me, there are 3,428 billionaires in the world, 989 in the U.S., followed next by China and India. There's a new billionaire every day, apparently. Altogether, these people (481 of whom are women) have a combined wealth of $20.1 trillion. 

As Google AI again tells me, "a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is visually represented as a massive, 100-level-high structure of $100-note pallets covering a football field twice, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty. It is 10,000 stacks of $100 million crates, enough to dwarf a human, making them look like an ant."

A mere billion dollars, meanwhile, "is best visualized as a 34-foot high cube of $100 bills, or in $1 bills would reach 67 miles high . . . and would take 274 years to spend at a rate of $10,000 per day."

And here I'm feeling extravagant for booking a $250-a-night hotel for a week in Berlin in June? (And yeah, it does feel extravagant.)

You can find the top ten industries for billionaires, and the richest individuals in each, here. (Though that article is from two years ago, so who knows what the shake-down is now.)

Meanwhile, I get incensed by footballers and actors and musicians getting paid tens of millions of dollars for their—I want to put "work" in quotation marks, but sure, they are working. It might not be improving the future of humanity, but it's work. And in the case of movie actors and musicians, I eat it up, so what I am complaining about? 

I also know actors who make nothing, but who do the work because they love it. I have many musician friends who go out every week and perform at a local venue, with a dedicated coterie of fans, and still they are struggling to make ends meet.

Some actors and musicians and footballers get lucky, and good for them. 

But these billionaires? Who seem to be taking over the U.S. government? What are they actually doing?

I don't have a particular point here. Except that the world has shifted dramatically from what I grew up expecting. And I don't like it.

And a big part of me says I should stop listening to/reading the news. Wouldn't that be nice?

90. Project 365

I posted this a while back on FB, but I'll post it here too, for posterity. Here's what I wrote on FB:

Almost 18 years ago, I completed my first photo-a-day project (Project 365), which I posted daily on Flickr. Back in December, I started my fifth such project—after a gap of 13 years. Here it is so far, 88 days in. It's simple enough: take a photo every day, and post it, with a bit of explanation of why or what. I find it a fascinating (I guess I'm easily fascinated!) record of the mostly tiny moments that make up my days, my life.

Since then, a couple of weeks have passed. And yes, more pictures! 

I'm up to day 107 now—almost a third of the way along. Some days I completely forget to take a picture—days when I'm busy at home, with a work project usually (currently: editing a book about an early woman lawyer)—and then have to find something, anything, in my immediate surroundings to document (a cat, for example; cats are easy targets). 

It's strange and lovely to go back, even all the way back to 2008 and the first Project 365, and remember that very moment, where I was, what I was struck by to take that shot. I do sometimes wish I were better at embracing moments without the aid of a photograph. But I'm also glad I have all these photos to remind me of the wealth of my experience.

Here are the photos I've taken the last seven days, complete with their Flickr captions:

Trail closed. But that doesn’t stop us,
outlaws that we are. Or judging from the
well-defined groove in the grass, others either.

Morning light on shells. This sight made me happy
this morning as I started one of two poetry
Zooms for today. Sometimes it’s the little things…

New books. I'm not much into shopping (just take a look
at my closet)—except when it comes to books. The subtlest
recommendation, and I'm off to the internet putting in an order.
These books arrived yesterday and today. The one on the bottom
was a freebie (two copies, actually): a gorgeous book about
the photographer Edward Steichen and his delphiniums, which
I was fortunate enough to proofread for the Eastman Museum
in Rochester, NY, for an upcoming exhibition. The next one up
is a book of poetry, by a poet I admire. The one above is
Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), writing about the vanishing of his
world—recommended by a guest on Ezra Klein's podcast, for its
present-day pertinence. I certainly do feel like the world I've
always relied on has vanished. Americanah is a novel my SIL
said she loved. And I'm not exactly sure where I heard about
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (it's about
Gaza), but it sounded important. Winner of prizes, but the very title
is so provocative. So yeah: I do shop. Bur pretty much only for books.
And groceries. Gotta eat.

Oh Canada. This guy was very calm—though he never
took that eye off me as I made my way past on my afternoon walk.

Morro Bay. Spent the day visiting friends in Morro Bay and Cambria.
I always enjoy spending time in this corner of the California coast.
It feels quieter and more secluded than our own corner.
We started our visit with a walk at Cloisters Beach. 

Pinnacles High Peaks. Three of us went for an 8.5-mile hike
today at Pinnacles National Park. The forecast was for
90-degree heat in the afternoon, so we got going from our house
at 6:30, arriving at 7:30. It was delightfully cool as we set out,
and although it did grow gradually warmer during the course
of the morning (we finished up around 12:30), we were perfectly
comfortable. We saw many wildflowers, some chipmunks and squirrels,
many turkey vultures (though the condors remained tucked away
waiting for afternoon thermals), and the best: a foot-long southwestern
pond turtle in a small stream; a beautifully patterned frog, in the same
stream; and a western rattlesnake stretched across the trail. Several women
were taking a big detour (into the stream) to avoid it, but we figured,
what? it's not coiled, it's just enjoying the sun—no problem.
So we marched right past it, and sure enough, although it flicked its tongue
at us (tasting us), it didn't seem to care one whit. I bet that sun on its
long body felt sooooooo good! 

Great egret. A frog pond visitor. From the
sound of the frogs singing in the evenings, s/he
is probably finding plenty to snack on.

89. Ross Gay and Gwendolyn Brooks, poets

Yesterday on FB I ran into a poem by Ross Gay, a sparkle of a man whose writing I enjoy so much. 

Sorrow Is Not My Name

                    —after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.
Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

                    —for Walter Aikens

Well, that just got me curious about the epigraph: "after Gwendolyn Brooks." Fortunately, others have gotten curious too, and I quickly found an essay in the Paris Review that unlocks the secret. In it, the author references the poem that Gay was responding to:

To The Young Who Want To Die

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale.
The gun will wait. The lake will wait.
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April.
You do not have to die this certain day.
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement.
I assure you death will wait. Death has
a lot of time. Death can
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor;
can meet you any moment.

You need not die today.
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness.
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow.

Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.

I have had less luck learning who Walter Aikens is. A young friend of Gay's, perhaps, who was battling his own sorrows. No telling, and not important—except for the connection that the two of them had (the poem was published in 2011) and hopefully still have.