Late morning, hot tea with milk and honey.

The rain has returned. Brief respite yesterday, complete with sun and cold. I walked from my house up to 30th and Willamette and back. Turned over stories in my head. Some of these random bits of the past that surface when I walk alone seem ripe to be turned into fiction or essays. But I'm the writer who hates to write. This is a problem.

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Received two nice notices this past week about my poems in Lungfull! It's encouraging but also depressing because I'm not writing now. I've penned a couple pages of "notes for poems" or really, just collections of language that seemed to fit together at one time. The last words on the legal page I'm staring at now are "Kary Mullis." Someone needs to write a poem about him, I guess.

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Finished Frankenstein and now teaching Slaughterhouse-Five. First three classes were good--I felt strong, confident, etc. The last Frankenstein lecture seemed shaky to me, though one student complimented me on it afterward. Yesterday's lecture was just lukewarm. I relied too much on my notes which made ME feel a bit disjointed. I can't tell if the students cared one way or another. I teach in late afternoon in a warm room--the environment is already alertness challenged, though I haven't had any blatant sleepers yet. The more you teach, the less you know. Or something trite.