Playing Hooky.

Today is No Class Day out there at J. Crew U. — they shut the whole thing down for a day-long celebration of student and faculty research, but only of a certain kind: the poets get told their poems aren't researchy enough, and could they please include in their presentations what a sonnet is, please. The dancers get asked to dance, and then, besides having been adorable and bendy, explain what they were up to and what dance is for in the first place. And in our department, the Department of Vampires, Wizards, and Bridget Jones Studies, the faculty research presentation this morning is focusing on something like how awesome that movie starring Nicholas Cage where he's made of fire and rides a motorcycle is. So ANYLF decided to stay home and measure barometric pressure. Expect a fifteen-minute PowerPoint presentation at next year's J. Crew Uboree.

But if — if — one can get out of one's head for one wee moment, and if one can drag one's head to the place where the INCESSANT ENDLESS HIGH-DECIBEL MOCKINGBIRDING is a soothing beautiful sign of the circle of life and renewal of seasons, then one can sit on one's porch in the sunny breezy sixties and think to oneself, So I work at a puppet show. It's Tuesday. I'm sitting on my porch and thinking about the weather.