Darkness

We are days away from the darkest depths of the year, and my photography is reflecting that. I'm never outside when it's daylight, except on my walk to work! And even then, the light is rather gray -- the "wan sun" striking "tin glints" that Sylvia Plath mentioned in her wintry poem Parliament Hill Fields.

Yesterday was another work, work, work kind of day -- a steady stream of tasks. I actually ate lunch at my desk because no one was available to cover for me, so in between bites I was up helping students. It is just a relentless pace.

I went to see Dave in the evening. On the one hand, he seems to be making progress. We walked around the seventh floor and talked to have some privacy away from his "roommates." But on the other, he seems a bit foggy.

"I never expected to have surgery twice in the same day," he said last night.

"Dave, your surgeries weren't on the same day," I replied. "Your first surgery was Friday, and your second was Sunday."

He looked at me skeptically. I think he has completely lost that intervening day. I know time has a way of telescoping and collapsing in the hospital, but still -- that freaked me out a little. 

Anyway, he's still not on solid food, and I've been unable to connect with the doctor to find out why. I think he may begin eating today. Dave has promised to ask the doctor to call me, so we shall see.

Two of Olga's Kong toys have disappeared. For years, she's had three of them, and I can only find one. I have looked under every stick of furniture and all over the garden. I think she may have left them outside to be spirited away by foxes. You may think that unlikely, but it has happened in the past. It's annoying because Kongs are expensive, but fortunately she's not as obsessively attached to them as she used to be.

While walking her yesterday morning I found yet another abandoned houseplant, a rubber tree left on the corner next to a utility box. So of course that came home with me. We now have three rubber trees.

I was sorry to read about the death of poet Nikki Giovanni. I always admired her literary voice and her politics. I went with some friends to see her speak in the early 1990s -- I believe it was this event, actually -- and she was quite fiery and irreverent, as I recall, though I can't remember specifics. She's one of those people who seems frozen in my memory as a young woman, so to read that she was 81 was surprising. Where does the time go?

(Photos: Houses on my walk home from the hospital last night.)