8:74) Ginny Little 20-JAN-98 12:55

do your taxes, wait online for the overcrowded server to respond and try not to scream before throwing your computer through the window, just for fun. dissertation lays on the floor in piles of manilla folders and i wonder how to translate what i do, who these brilliant students are, how i ignite their passion for learning, to others. it seems too much. kid in the middleschool blows his head off, leaves a note. parents divorcing and he shoots himself with a gun purchased for him for hunting at christmas. black kid in lousianna is shot down in the street during a martin luther king, jr. parade, the spokesman for non-violence, and it is a black man who kills a black child and they are turning in on themselves, and who can blame them, and did anybody hear my heart shatter this morning in tiny fragments of crushed glass, tinkling after the explosion? van to take kids to omaha is cancelled, it's always something, wood burning stove needs so much clearance in my new home office it now stands in the middle of the room and will scorch me if i light it i am sure...too much heat in my life. dust is everywhere, in my eyes, choking the breath from my throat, my lungs wheeze and i think of the vaporizer and its calming shoo, shoo, i slept to all my life as a kid, and i miss it's comforting sounds, and i imagine hope and her children singing...and i want to be a child again, with someone rocking me to sleep, feeling safe, warm, loved and unworried about deadlines or dead pets, or dead children, or building inspectors or superintendents who wish to ooogle my office tomorrow.

it is still grey, but grey fits and strangely comforts.