plates

Sometimes, the calmest and most comforting thing about a day is evening sunlight falling on piles of plates stacked in a cupboard.

This picture is by way of a response to Mark's comment, a few days ago, about the public nature of blogging - a form of exposure that is made all the more direct if one's completely upfront about doing it under one's own name, and if the blog's name, too - as his and mine's both are - is blazoned loud and clear on the departmental website. It would be indiscreet, impolite, discourteous to write what one's thinking when away from home on so many occasions - let alone to document said occasion with satiric photographs - even if the creative temptation, as both photographer and writer, is sometimes sorely there (note to readers in mid-Texas - I didn't find myself holding back with relation to anything about the BWWC conference - fear not! - and I was, after all, far too blatant about what I thought about the view from and around the College Station Hilton). More frequently, it's in relation to immediate work circumstances that I find the greatest pressure to be circumspect - not going into any details about why I was glad to get home to a tranquil cupboard of colored plates, a glass of chardonnay, a sliver or two of cheese that we brought back from NYC last Tuesday, Alice's amazingly good lentil soup, and sitting outside with her in our backyard, which quite extraordinarily has developed thick green leaves on the trees over the last couple of days. And in this, there is, perhaps, a moral about being obliged - forced, maybe? - to look outside one's immediate and overwrought responses to a day.