bliss

Blisters, sunburn, roughed up tennis balls, endless cups of coffee, paint chips, papers, errands. Just general messiness in my life and work right now. Something seems to fall apart every day; something else is stitched together. I hang a chandelier, another team drops out of my upcoming tennis tournament. And yet I'm amazed to keep waking up in a bizarrely uncharacteristic Zen state. To what or whom do I owe this pleasure?

I think it is my freshmen. They make me laugh, make me love teaching in spite of my spring chaos. Today reading poetry together - pondering, joking, sitting in wonder - reminded me once again of how fortunate I am to do the work that I do. I saw this snippet of a Yeats poem recently and I'm dedicating it to my girls here - past, present, and future:

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said: 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
William Butler Yeats,
from "Adam's Curse"