Morning Moon

I've been sneaking out of the house before daybreak each morning to attend a microbiology class. Once again, not my favorite thing to do but I'm hopeful having the class on my transcript will lead to me being qualified to teach more classes. For the first time in my life I'm getting an A in a science class. This has never happend to me - imagine how funny it feels to do well in a class in which I have absolutely no interest... Hmmm...

E. coli anyone? Klebsiella pneumoniaea? No? Well, then, how about some Staphylococcus aureaus... I grew it myself!

Am I the only person in this class who gets the irony of the phrase "streaking for isolation?" The instructor intends for us to streak these petri plates with bacteria that can only grow on certain mediums, and so, we are streaking for isolation, but I imagine myself running naked through an empty meadow far up the Cascade mountains, literally streaking...for...isolation...

Here is the moon just this week as I left the driveway. It followed me all the way to school, then left me on my own.

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.