on this side of the earth a strong wind is blowing, but it's a warm wind, and leaves are flying from their neat piles on the side of the road, and filling up the yards again where people so patiently had raked (in my case), or got out the horsepower and burned gas to blow them around. i myself had raked for the mental pleasure of doing it (i think it's my right to not rake, but i actually enjoy raking these days)...it was warm, and beautiful, with oranges turning to browns and greens fading slowly into winter. i also spent some time burning sticks which was hugely satisfying except that it threw the baby off (visiting granddaughter) and she definitely reacted to the smell; she didn't especially want to be picked up by wood-pile smelling old grandpa.

on the other side of the world a volcano erupted, and continues to erupt; it's called mount nyamulagira, and it's in the d.r. congo, which has been called both the most musical place on the planet, and the worst possible place to be a woman. i think, in fact, that all these things could be true, and the volcano is real to boot and could get more real with every passing day. this is a place with all kinds of animals, including gorillas and okapi, and many kinds of terrain, thousands of warring tribes, civil war in its immediate past, and a vast and impenetrable interior. attractive to me, yes, but only from my armchair. there's no way i could even imagine going there, at this moment.

got to work this morning, and it was monday morning; i don't drink all weekend, so i get there ready to work, and actually enjoy my work, most of the time. so anyway i'd only graded half my midterm, because a colleague had walked off with about half of them, and my students had done quite poorly on it, so i'd fretted all weekend, and tracked him down early, and forced him to empty out his briefcase of all papers, so that he could find the twenty or so tests that were mine. tons of ungraded stacks came out of that poor briefcase. this guy made me look like an anal, uptight, overorganized fanatic who actually gets my midterms back to the students on monday. the surprising thing is, they did so well on that last half (it was easy, apparently), that many of them passed, a surprising number. their luck.

took a son down into the creek bed because his assignment, for some reason, was to put twenty rocks in a shoe-box. it actually wasn't easy to get down into that creek-bed and i was surprised, upon getting down there, that the water was high, and not too many rocks were exposed. guess it has been raining, a little; i know it rained today, hard, with violent lightning and thunder, but this was before, over the weekend, and i hadn't remembered much rain before that. we are heading into the changeover - from dry, august through october, to wet, which starts now or any day now. and i can see, already the drainspouts need cleaning, the water has no place to go. we're now a two-car family; i no longer bicycle every day, but this is ok; i'm still swimming, keeping my head above water, so to speak.

trips approach, one to new mexico, before thanksgiving, and one to peoria, and possibly iowa, after, so i should get a little tour of the countryside, and that's good, because this time of year, as i like to say, is by far the most gorgeous of any time, downright spiritual, to get out on the road, as things get brown, and dull reddish, and dark yellow. people look at me as if i'm crazy when i say it. the hajj happened to be in november this year, but i say, every trip in november is a holy trip, a pilgramage, even if you go to visit grandmother, or you only go a couple of city blocks. it's incredibly beautiful, and it's always this way. though, later in the month, especially farther north like iowa, you do run into some snow, and sometimes it blows around, limits your visibility, threatens your welfare, right out there on the highway. it's been known to happen. but i say, hang in there, survive; i have a new traveling hat, relatives to see, a journey to make, and i badly need to get away. a small town moves in on you once in a while, especially a self-absorbed one, a cauldron of egos slowly simmering and reaching a boiling point without even being aware of it. folks drive too fast, and there are lots of casualties. it chews people up and spits them out, and if you don't get out once in a while, you lose all perspective.