So much of my life is taken up with boring, tedious details. Explaining to the State of California why I don't owe them 2005 taxes. Noting student attendance and giving them daily grades for participation, attendance, and fluency; paying bills; making sure that I hang my keys up on the hook so that I can find them again; laundry and folding clothes and putting them away (I hate putting them away); filling out my time sheet, and other stuff that is so much more boring than what I remember now. I think about this often, how I really don't remember half of the things I do, probably more than half.

I know I could write poems about these things, perhaps, if I could remember them. When I worked at the Henry L. Stimson Center, I wrote poems with language from staff meetings and panel discussions, and started a rather long poem based on acronyms officially in use by the Department of Defense. Now, I don't feel like I have the strength or interest to poetically engage my everyday details. Instead, I want to get away from them.

Maybe it's time to start working on another one of my big long procedural Chinese translations. Or to make more doodles. There was a book at the Dupont Circle location of Secondstory Books in Washington, DC that I regret buying. It was a Chinese language reader based on the speeches of Mao. That would have been fun to work with. I'm a sucker for old language text books.