No time to spare for days, spent my only free half-hour texting new ideas for protest chants to my companeras in PJJP. (From the river, to the sea/none are free til all are free; Never Again, Never Again/must mean both Jews and Palestinians).

I’ll have time tomorrow morning, will catch up, do fill in. Or sleep, since I’m down to less than 6 hours a night so I can go to everything here and do the writing and reading daily homework.

In the meantime, look to the right for the poem 5-ARD. I’m taking it to workshop right now. Yesterday we had to write a poem beginning with the line: “In my walled in space I have let everything grow with wild abandon.” I started by trying to write about Palestine, the “walled in” taking me there, but couldn’t let myself sink into that with only 15 minutes to write. So this poem began appearing. What’s posted here about 8 drafts later, with plenty still to go.

And Palestine — more than 700 dead in Gaza, 250+ of those children, and 5 of them Israeli soldiers shot in the back by an IDF tank. “Unintentional casualties” one and all.

1. No, I’m not sharing a suite with boys, or with anyone. Now if only I had keys to the other rooms…

2. Lying down last night, I realized this room is the same size as my sukkah. All metaphors or inferences are now up to you.

3. I brought everything for my coffee bar except a coffee scoop. Standing there, pre-coffee, trying to decide how many pinches of coffee would equal three scoops, my bleary mind fixed on the little half-n-half plastic cups. Yes! They are about the size of a coffee scoop, and even have a little tab to use as a handle. All is well, supplies are secure, no need to call the Coffee Calvary to rescue me.

5. Dai’eynu — it would have been luxury enough to be sleeping in a room that is thoroughly warm, after my drafty house and Fear of PGW Bill life, but here the heat won’t stop, so I got to sleep in a room that was thoroughly warm AND have the window open to let in the crisp January air.

6. Waking up this morning, on a bed for which “cot” is a more accurate name, I remembered that I did, in fact, have plenty of sex in college on just such a “bed.” Was I that much smaller and flexible? Or just hormonal and desperate? Or was it all heterosexual and pretty much limited to the missionary position? College beds are lesbo-phobic, pass the word and start a petition!

Here’s a photo of my command center, where the magic will happen for the next ten days. And of the in-room coffee bar, which will help fuel the magic.

Coffee, shower, breakfast with poets (starts at 8, but in an effort to not be a total geek I won’t be there when the doors open….)

Tired tired puppy. All day was orientation stuff — forms, parking permits, student IDs (discounts for theatre and museums, here I come!). Then dinner — cafeteria food is cafeteria food is….. Then a faculty colloquium, each of the eight members reading and discussing one poem they love. In my notes, I seem to have described this as a “composium,” which is definitely a word I’ll use sometime soon. Would you like to come to a composium on a winter’s afternoon?

Opening the writer’s notebook I swore I’d carry everywhere, I found drafts of four poems of which I had no memory whatsoever. I’ll put them up soon, once I build a working-drafts space for myself on here.

Jean Valentine read two poems by Mahmoud Darwish, “They Didn’t Ask What’s After Death” and “And We Love Life.” Given the disaster unfolding in Gaza right now, this line is echoing around my chest: “How does blood flow from a ghost?” While she was describing Darwish and his work, I began to really think about the fact that he died last August right before Tisha B’Av. I have scribbled notes of what may be a poem about that — check back soon.

Alicia Ostriker read a poem by Jane Mead called “Concerning the Prayer That I Cannot Make.” One line there summed up so much of this experience for me, especially the fear that my writing is not strong enough to convey everything bursting to be said out of the complexity that I experience as a four dimensional web woven tight around the world: “I am not equal to my longing.”

Time to sleep, pondering on that one. Tomorrow starts early, orientation stuff for we student poets while the faculty meets to decide on who mentors who. Oy.

Monday January 5, 2:05, have navigated 2 hours of NE corridor traffic, hoo-hah about necessary vaccines, a warm welcoming committee, and a 3rd floor dorm room possessing no elevator but warmed to semi-tropical heat zone temperatures. From the names on the doors, it may be that the res life folks have put me in a suite with the guys, all sharing one bathroom. Hmmmm, I’ll let you know how THAT goes. Having just unpacked a lot of stuff, moving would be annoying.

But who cares??? I AM AT POET SCHOOL! I have way too much stuff with me! But again, WHO CARES, I AM AT POET SCHOOL!

Ok, gotta put a few more things away and then go back and force myself to be social, which is hardly my strong suit. Guess I’ll leave all the clothes in the suitcase, just in case I have to wheel it down a hall or some such. But if I do — WHO CARES, I (you can finish that yourself)

First entry,

5 days before I leave for school.  Happyanxiousworriedexcitedcalmedstirredshakenmixed.  You know, typical Elliott, but with higher than usual quota of happy and excited.  As soon as I learn how to post drafts of my new writing, I’ll get some up, and y’all can follow along, comment and edit, and generally be part of this virtual we’re all in together even when we’re far apart.