to take the place of at least two other blogs! One thing I learned on my sabbatical is that when my life is much more integrated, I am much happier. Trying to keep it all separate, and think of 'work things' and 'home things' and 'horse things' and 'garden things' just makes it all that much harder to track. It makes me feel like a drawer organizer, with unidentifiable bits floating around the bottom, that I keep trying not to see.
And I also have this, that comes from Robert Winner. It just makes me want to mush it all up together, all the things I love---my work, my family, my home, my garden, my pony... And see what comes when I don't try to measure it.
The Ruler
Measured at school, lined up
against the gymnasium wall, or before that
the power of dimes and marbles---or later:
locker room comparisons, ball scores,
test grades---and finally: checkbooks,
taxes, horsepower, serial numbers, etc.
How did all these accountants
crash the party of the glands,
and build their skeleton inside me?
I want to disorganize my life.
I want my days unmeasurable.
Maybe the careful weighing at my birth,
the morning I learned to tell time
from a clock in a Chinese laundry,
counted cracks in the pavement, or felt
the ruler's pressure on my head---
like the flat of the sword on a knight's
shoulder---were signifying moments,
saying to me as all of me listened,
"This is what is most important about you:
your length on earth, your shadow
a measurable thing."
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