100 Words: The Weekend
The weekend is self-devouring, its own species of unmarked time, a step away from them as Frank O’Hara has it. Spent most of the day in front of the computer grading student poems and stories, radiant with earnestness and the occasional startling note of grace; in the afternoon an hour in the rose garden with a circle of masked friends sketching the fountain carved with pelicans. This is the flânerie of which I’m capable, biking through Evanston in rich sunshine while the news simmers and the cops burn down. My heart isn’t in my pocket, friends—I left it at home.