Listening to Coltrane's A Love Supreme after listening to a bunch of Steve Reich and Keith Jarrett.

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Working on a new longish poem called Risk Groups. Not sure where it might be going. I think though that it owes a bit of its impetus to the impending end of my career in public health.

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Three weeks to go before my last day at the Health Dept. Those final weeks will be pretty frantic as I try to finish up as much as I can. As much as I want to leave the job, goodbyes are always difficult. There have been a few surprisingly touching moments already--heartfelt exchanges with people I've worked with in the field for as many as 34 years. It's a time for reflection, for sure.

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As I wrote in an earlier deleted post, to be a public health sanitarian is to be a professional worrier. One's spending one's working days trying to prevent bad things from happening. What does one accomplish in the end? I can't tell you how many people I kept from getting sick. I don't know. It's an intense job with many layers. It's also pretty thankless. I'm looking forward to the next chapter. I want to live some of the life I've deferred over these last 30 plus years. I want to do some readings, collaborations, and take the writing to a different level than I've had time for thus far. That's my ambition. We'll see what happens.

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Am hoping to travel east soon before the De Kooning retrospective ends at MOMA. That's a show I'm aching to see.

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I'm also hoping to redefine my relation to blogs in the coming year and to step things up at Ask/Tell.

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Peace,

Tom

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