13 days.

It has been thirteen days since my last post.

I have no idea why I have been so at a loss for ideas, even after spending 5 fun days frolicking with Yasu and Gonchan in the sun dappled quadrangles of Cornell. Surely a dose of Debussy and a stroll down by lake Cayuga should have done something to restore my imaginative spirits. But no. No revived spirits. No spirits of any kind. Not a sausage.

Then, this morning, that prickly sensation I get when there are the stirrings of an idea. I tilted my head and cracked my neck. I started thinking, 'Try something less ambitious than the Pushkin project now, just to get your bearings back. Why not something less narrative, more reflective, more purely lyrical?'

What could be less ambitious than this? Yes, I hear Keats calling. I haven't heard that voice for a very long time. Maybe there was some sweet, slowly dissolving drug laced in the wine I sampled at Six Mile Creek Vineyard...


O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth...

I have a poem to write. I must think on't.