Remarkable Monday

Yesterday was full of twists and surprises. Quite a day.

• I started early and by ten had my class work done.
• My check, which is automatically deposited, didn't show up. I later found out I was not "in the system" -- this after 14 years of teaching there! Amazing. The wonderful office manager in the Eng Dept got it all fixed for me.
• Bob Hicks wrote generously about my book of poems. This raised memory of my irritation at being rejected to read from the book at Wordstock. I mean, dozens and dozens of writers read there, they couldn't find fifteen minutes for "one of Portland's literary lions," "one of Oregon's most precious natural resources," which is what I've been called in the press (mean things as well), fifteen minutes for an old fart to read a few poems as a personal gesture of something ending? Nope. I was stunned. But I surely got the message. So it was terrific to get support from Hicks, an arts writer as good as any in town (and beyond for that matter).
• I got a small royalties check. They always surprise me. They always crack me up. Coffee money.
• I did Skype with H in New Hampshire. She is surviving the storm.
• I got some good work done on Sodom, Gomorrah and Jones , which is beginning to feel a tad like my Finnegans Wake, that is, a work of layered self-indulgent complexity and fun.

I hope the rest of the week is quieter than Monday.