Long Time Gone

So it's been more than a month now since I've posted anything here. I've got excuses, sure. I spent a week in Long Beach at TED and a week in San Fran at NAIS, and the week in between was the week of our the once-yearly curriculum day at our school, which it was my responsibility to plan and host. I've been reading some terrific books as welll: Stoner by John Williams, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, Justice by Michael Sandel, Day Out of Days by Sam Shepard, Chang-Rae Lee's book due out next month, some art monographs on Gerhard Richter and Giorgio Morandi and Jasper Johns, and bits and pieces of a lot of other things as well. I've seen literally dozens of speakers and taken pages of notes and had generally way more mental input in the last three weeks than I have had time to process, and more to the point, more input than I have been able to figure out even where to begin writing about.

My dilemma as a blogger: the little things seem hardly worth writing about, and the big things seem too daunting. And so one day after another slips by without the sine qua non: a beginning. So that's what today's post is about, essentially, lowering my standards, as Hobbes once said to Calvin, to the point where they've already been met. I've been here before. I'm here again. I'm going to try to be here again tomorrow, maybe string together a couple of minimalist posts to get my writing rhythm back.