it feels ok, running around with all these poetry reading posters, and self-publicizing, but that's partly because it's all a benefit, for the homeless shelter, and i'm already a little famous in this small town anyway, so it's not really trying to make a name for myself, so much as coming out as a poet. but i'm glad i don't take myself too seriously because so much has gone wrong, it's just unbelievable. the coffeeshop says it's wide open, any day is ok, but i choose one and it's taken. i think that's ok, to have two things there in one night, but it's not. i change the date to a week later, but the doctor changes the date of the birth to a week earlier, and now my main headline poet, he's supposed to have a baby on the 15th, same day as the reading. can't talk that doctor into changing his golf game i suppose? no, they're scheduling it for the 15th. that poet will have someone read for him, maybe. the 15th is indirect competition with valentines day, and the international festival, it's a busy time, but we'll live. we're psyched, so to speak. philosophy club, bane of my existence.

i'm a stalinist, because things i'd rather not do, i just kind of stall, and i'm always stallin, because i have so much to do, that some things get put off indefinitely. my job includes all kinds of things that can be put off, but that's bad because so many more can't be put off and there are some things that just aren't getting done. then today, monday morning, my wife got an offer from lubbock texas, texas tech, and i was surprised that i was interested myself, even though it's the far plains, way out there, way flat, way hot, way cotton country. and still it seemed kind of cool, moving way out there. i just needed to entertain a possibility of change. we rolled lubbock around on our tongues, looked it up in wikipedia. probably won't happen. but it seemed kind of interesting there for a while. kind of like bobby knight, moving out there to lubbock. except we probably won't do it. and we don't throw chairs.

so i'm doing publicity, but i lose my main poet to a probable birth situation, and it kind of takes the wind out of my sails, and maybe i should just concentrate on the usual work, that i'm so far behind on. i wonder why i get so tired, & it's because this stuff kind of weighs on me, and i try my best to tear around in the mornings and get as much of it done as possible, yet i stop to talk to people sometimss & it costs me. one class is 2-5 in this room that is directly at the origin of the heater and it's always at least a hundred even with the door open; makes me want to crack the window but that's probably impossible. an oven, a sauna, and nap time to boot, and i have trouble getting anything out of the students, at all...can't blame them. 2-5, nap time. especailly if you're up 'til like 2.

now here's my question. it hasn't rained in texas in like two years, except for a storm which flew through there once a while back. a complete and total drought which turned the kerrville folk festival into a dust storm and threatens to do the same for everyone else. now i say this is related to the fact that they've sucked the bottom out of the water table, and this is because there are millions of people living out in the desert, in places like phoenix and el paso and lubbock, but it's a desert. so if they have no water table and the result is a drought parches the land for two years i maintain those two are related, but they might not be. but either one might be a good reason not to move out there. minnesota would be better, i'd say, at least in terms of having snow once in a while and having a big old lake to stick your toe in when you get bored. guess we'll stay free and see what pops up, & i say this though for all intents and purposes i've declared southern illinois my home, i've been here seventeen years, i've taken to saying half the stuff they say around here.

i do africa for a hobby. helps me get away from it all, and see how vast and diverse this world is. it's a wild place, africa. it has spurts of democracy, or hope. times when everyone does business and improves their lot, or argues about the intentions of the chinese. and it has weather too, maybe not like the lubbock tornado of 1970, or the tri-state tornado of 1925 (?) but weather nonetheless. a good rainstorm, now you don't see that everyday. sometimes europe gets all the snow, and then people like me are forced to drop, exhausted, into bed, without even seeing any. chao