-performed at the keep the faith benefit; survived a while as my wife and youngest, almost-one son went to nebraska; stalled some more on an important play that's running out of time; am working on another podcast - this one, hopefully, about bucky fuller; got back into the grind of meetings, classes, meetings, papers, meetings, and events in which you are to be civilized, polite, and consider reasonably a linguistics merger with the department of foreign languages.... meanwhile spring's a poppin'. sprung forward, learned some patience with various boys around, tried to keep up with the swimming.

big change at the japanese garden. where it opened out onto a peaceful parking lot, where cars came up against a grassy hill beneath it, there's a fence now; construction workers use that lot, and up to the left huge machines break out the main wall of an ugly old library that's been there for years. this violent rupture both makes the garden more of a sanctuary, and reminds me of the jarring yet random placement of images in my path. the path, by the way, is more crowded, the fence blocking off all parking-lot-cut-throughs. the flowers bloom in their own way; even the bamboo wonders...

on the chat the subject of different parises (paris illinois, paris kentucky, paris texas) led to verSALES illinois (there's a verSALES missourah too) - and how the speakers, one in phoenix, another in paris- could probably not manage any of them, with their stifling small-town mispronunciation. quietly i thought- i've heard these small no-count towns (like mine) abused before. but i'd rather have my kids growing up knowing there's a lot of action somewhere else (invariably they do leave, here in the midwest, though they often come back) - than growing up in the center of it all, knowing full well this is all there is, and wondering every minute if this is all life offers...so, i stay put another day, i guess. keep hope alive.