The soul-quake happened here in a glass world

So our internet stopped working shortly before I left the house last night, which was irrelevant for the next several hours because I was participating in the previously mentioned poetry reading at the Sloane Merrill Gallery. I think it went very well. The gallery itself is a lovely small space with brick walls and three levels; we started out reading directly in the storefront, but after one round reoriented more into the gallery so that the half-dozen chairs and the stairs on which everyone else was sitting formed a semicircle. (Good call, April!) We read by turns in alphabetical order, starting with Gillian and ending with me, two or three poems at a time. I heard some really terrific pieces from everyone, especially new work. I read a mixed selection from Ghost Signs and uncollected poems, opening with "Clear" and closing with "After the Red Sea." Afterward I received a real compliment from one of Gillian's friends: she said I made the ancient world immediate and vivid, not distant or dry. That is the sort of thing I take very seriously and am honored to hear. Also this way I don't have to feel bad about the impromptu lectures I can remember giving about the motif of mourning sirens and the loss of Carthaginian literature. Thank you to AJ for proposing this event in the spring and Ali for letting us have the space! It was a lot of fun.

The rest of the night involved driving nineweaving home with gaudior, acquiring a surprisingly successful Brussels sprout sandwich from the Clover in Inman Square, meeting derspatchel for about an hour in Davis while I ran an errand, and watching more seaQuest, which I am genuinely enjoying even as the worldbuilding continues to throw itself at the wall and see what sticks, which is generally nothing from week to week. The Titanic-ish ghost story was unexpected, but nicely done. I don't have much to say about most of the guest stars, but Udo Kier makes a great guilt-haunted geneticist. I really keep meaning to watch his turns as Frankenstein and Dracula.

And then this morning I got up a little before nine o'clock to wait for the RCN technicians on an hour and a half of sleep—trust me, I'm trying—and therefore they arrived inevitably a little before noon. The problem was either a loose connection of the cable in the basement or a splice in the tangle of cables in the box on the side of the house or some interacting quality of the two; no matter what, they fixed it. I got my hammer out of the closet and a bunch of nails from Gaudior's tookit and finally hung my calendar on the wall next to my desk, so that I can keep track of my life without fishing it out of the green basket chair every time. The wall over the desk now holds the necklace ladymondegreen sent me in October: it is made of braided leather and the shells of sea-snails and tiny ark clams and sea-amber; it looks like Neolithic jewelry. I cannot imagine wearing it safely, but I am happy to look at it every time I glance up from my screen.

Have some things I would have linked sooner:

1. Courtesy of strange_selkie: butch Kate Winslet. She should wear ties more often.

2. There are a lot of demons in Jewish folklore, but Carol K. Howell's "The Demon's Debut" is a perspective I haven't seen before. It reminds me slightly of Steve Stern's "Yiddish Twilight," except how it's exactly the opposite. The family's name is a nice touch.

3. Various actors including Ruth Wilson, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Sheen, and Maxine Peake read the Guardian's poems on climate change. I linked a few of these in the spring, but here's the entire collection with voices. James Franco appears to be the non-Brit in the bunch and I am not sure how that happened.

4. Serpent-footed Scythian goddess!

5. Still relevant: the United States Holocaust Museum makes a statement about the Syrian refugees. I am sorry not to have known about it until now, but I am glad to read that last night in front of the Massachusetts state house there was a rally.

I am seriously considering taking a nap.