Our coffeemaker died this morning - it wouldn’t **** all the water out of the reservoir - c'est tragique. We love our coffee and apparently, we brewed the life out of it. It sat, oddly neglected, in its usually busy spot beneath hanging copper pans. Adieu, faithful friend, you gave your life to a good cause. We’re reduced to using a freeze-dried brew.

Lisa grew up in New York highrises, and she was agog in our garden. “It’s like Versailles!” she whispered, when we first arrived and did the tour - flattering but hardly. It’s a six acre, French, Color Garden. An acre is like a football field without the end zones - so maybe you can picture the size of it as it wraps around the front of the house.

The lawn slopes off gently to circular beds and right-angled parterres. Two staircases lead to a fountain that feeds a rectangular reflecting pool full of lily-pads and lazy goldfish. Lisa and Leong spent hours this summer reading in the only cool spot, a shaded, wisteria-covered pergola, but gardens are best in fall and spring - when in bloom. I’m sorry they didn’t get to see the explosive flowerings - maybe we can come back, someday, for Easter vacation.

We’re leaving for New Haven at the end of the week so I’m slow organizing for academic life. I have 21 new notebooks (three per class or lab) and 60 various, carefully coutured, colored markers and gel-pens. I tried taking notes on my iPad last year but I found I remembered things better when I took colorful notes by hand, highlighting ideas, and pinning them down in my notebooks, like butterflies.

We hung out with a lot of rising college freshman girls this summer and across the board, it’s been fun. Their questions were super random, but super aware - their interests make our bumbling, freshie experiences seem buzzy. I remember being so ground-down the carceral, COVID lockdown of my 10th and 11th-grade years that college freedoms seemed like space travel. I’m excited for these girls.

Peter and I are squeezing in a morning Facetime call. He looked a little tousled and undone, sporting a black, almost blue, bedhead mess of morning hair. With his sleepy, brown eyes and five o’clock shadow, he looked like he just fell out of bed after hours of.. ahem. My usual, unfocused feelings seemed to find a compelling point.

I smiled and sipped my coffee, “What?” he said, self-consciously, upon catching my expression.

“I just can’t wait to see you in person.” I demurred, choosing to focus on this morning’s awful, instant coffee. I tend to chatter when I’m excited by something, but maybe I’m learning the power of silence.

A slow suicide called life and state sanctioned.
It is the condition of the carceral society.
Paranoia has become a proper state of mind.
And there's a despot around the corner.

Omnipresent surveillance.  Society of control.
The cattle are guided by passageways like electrons in a closed circuit to the killing floor.

Exchange market value of currency against convenience.
The stock that won't drop.
However, liberty and security are not interchangeable in a war machine that never stops.

'keep it real', he'd said
so i plunged the knife in deep.
not surprising, I ended up dead,
while others around did weep

so ended my carceral life
as shard of former self,
ground by constant strife
to fleck of dust on shelf

they wept, they cried,
they wrung their hands,
('such a pity he died,
we don't understand')

they shook their heads,
they wiped their eyes,
they wound red threads,
they looked sky-wise,

as for me,
hey! I'm free...