Today is the last day of my two-week break from work, the first break since ConFusion in January, and the first full-on vacation since the Christmas holidays. I enjoyed not having to work for two weeks, but the minutes, hours and days were so quickly filled with tasks, chores, and Things To Do that those two weeks included almost no rest at all. Last Tuesday I managed to get some time to myself, about three hours in which I walked around the neighborhoods, visited a cafe and a couple of bookstores, and wrote for a little while. And that was the only down-time, the only real relaxation, in the entire two weeks.

In other words, I need a vacation.

Earlier this week Zyra and I drove to Detroit, where we stayed in a moderately terrible hotel and ate fantastic food at a variety of excellent restaurants. We also, at the suggestion of one of our friends from the East Side, hit The Book Beat, a fantastic little bookstore in Oak Park, Michigan with an eclectic and surprisingly deep selection of books and magazines. Highly recommended, would visit again. While there, I picked up a couple of books:

First up is Nomadology: The War Machine by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, published by Semiotext(e). I think I owned a copy of this small book once upon a time, back in the 1990s. I am not sure what became of it. Probably lost in one of my many moves over the past quarter-century.

Next up is Black Mountain Poems, an anthology of work from the Black Mountain poets, edited by Jonathan C. Creasy. I picked this up because of my interest in the works of Paul Blackburn, specifically his beautiful “Matchbook Poem” which I return to again and again.

In reading and writing news, not much happening, because too much is happening EVERYWHERE ELSE. I did start Ana Simo‘s wonderfully strange Heartland, which arrived at the house from Restless Books a few years ago. And I’m still working my way slowly through my stack of The Paris Review, which is an absolutely wonderful experience.

I find it depressing to say that, since I head back to work tomorrow, I may finally have time to do some reading and writing. Selah!