it's cooler here, a welcome relief from the searing heat of earlier in the summer, when you couldn't go out without the help of air-conditioning, and things wilted left and right out on the lawn. now, i go out in the morning, and i can sit on the stoop with my son, and wait for the bus, and it's cool enough to breathe in the morning air; at night, i can look at the full moon, pause as i get the mail, notice for a minute, that i can actually stand out there comfortably. this is how summer should be; but, here, it's fall, with new students everywhere, and a new term starting. people are flooding the offices on campus; people get lost in various buildings trying to get their semester started in the right classes. the optimism, the sudden high tides in a town that has been sleepy all summer, is a jolt to those of us who have basically been working all summer, and are now more flooded than ever, so busy we can hardly prepare our own classes. but the comfortable weather means i am riding my bike to school, and enjoying it, and swimming also, so it's a time of unusual good health, though i'm not, say, writing much, or reading the news, or doing any pop art.

got into a discussion on the haiku list, where i finally asked them, how come all these haiku experts almost universally reject the 5-7-5 standard format of haiku, while the whole rest of the world virtually defines haiku by that standard format? They have their good reasons, and they shared them. i'm kind of stuck on the poetry collection, but i showed it to the list, and got some good feedback. basically to me, maintaining 5-7-5 at least allows a large body of poetry to be consistent, true to itself, like a song; this is lost by the freer verses i so often see on the list, which of course belong to no larger work, generally. again, we had discussion about various issues that concern me, but one is that i don't feel i can quote people here or elsewhere, to talk about the issues they bring up; it's a private kind of list. their poetry also, i'd sometimes like to grab & just keep, but i do most of my ruminating right here in front of everyone, so that would amount to republishing, which isn't quite cricket. it was even pointed out that linking to others' pictures, as i do, is a bit rude, though i can and will fix that; it was never intended to be anything but temporary. they were, as a group, unmoved by the idea of including links in poetry; it didn't stir them much.

family pictures are coming forth, mostly on facebook; many have my children, and grandchild, in various poses worth saving in one form or another. they will appear here, if i ever get organized. we posed, we smiled, we had our present faces, looking at the cameras. we came, conquered; we posed, we uploaded. i'm still basically exhausted, from a busy, hectic trip; fortunately everything went well; we all came back with a story, and, as the new and quick traffic squeals at every corner, i at least have a calm feeling, a memory, an image of cacti, blossoming in the dry sun, and the morning air in the high mountain desert. i brought just a touch of that fresh dry sun back with me; it seems that, in the mornings now, there's just a bit of dew that forms, when fall is coming for sure, the world turns just a little; the days get shorter, and everyone knows, things are changing. finally.