i feel like i've just run a marathon, but a mental one- slogging through thousands of words, of what could best be described as developmental grammar, compounded by the fact that i had many students, and my system ensures that they don't cheat, i.e. they wrote every single word of it themselves. i'd fall asleep nights grading, wake up and grade again, try and get some of the papers back to them, try to explain to the non-passers why it was not passing. the peak of it was last night- up until about three, crunching numbers, getting final grades, which i then handed back today.

at work, taking a minute off of grading, i'd snap pictures with a classy computer, which has a "photo booth" option...kind of like the old xerox art days, turning to the visual when the words just seem like so much confetti. if a picture is worth a thousand words, i think i'll raise the price on the pictures as the words all seem to be like garbage can lids on an interstate- just so much noise. it's a good time to work on my squares, my visuals in general, here on the web, but, i have other plans too...i'm heading into a week off, with lots going on.

still thinking about my trip to new york- speaking of a marathon, at one point i walked the entire length of avenue of the americas, which i took to be my central artery, since the hotels were on it. saw all the neighborhoods that it went through- saw the library, saw midtown, saw a bicyclist get hit by a car- saw times square through the buildings, at one point, as it was only one block away. i even saw a very old church and a very high fence that i'd seen before- and even written about, i believe, though i'm not sure i could find it. it was a basketball court, fenced in so completely that errant shots would never escape. saw some hollowed out neighborhoods, places where i wasn't sure who lived there or why.

why would i be remembering this? don't know. carbondale is lush in its greenness, flowers abloom everywhere, grass growing faster than a person can mow it. builders are changing the shape of our house, leaving the place not restful, not even the same from one day to the next. sleep is where a person can get it, but there hasn't been much, and the busy-ness of the season is beginning to heat up, before summer sets in and it gets crowded in a different way- the humidity pushes on you.

yet the camera plays- it turns stuff inside out, and makes color where my eyes have only seen faded sepia. makes little dots, and andy warhol design- though i myself can scarcely read a box score, or another bill. i'm tired, and need a break- don't mind teaching writing, i've learned a lot, i've been watching the way people pick stuff up...but the words, endless, by the million: they get like high water sometimes...time to get up on a roof, as they used to say in kansas, and wait it out. what else can you do? quick, before it rains again.