This has been the most difficult finals week of my academic career. Regarding next term: Goal #1 Don't get sick. Goal #2 If goal 1 is not achieved, do not get very sick. Here's to hoping my next one will be better than this one!

I have one more final left...
But I am much more interested in my winter break reading.

So far I will be choosing between:
Aviation from the Ground Up
The Shack (a highly controversial book I've wanted to read but not wanted to start for lack of ambition to read it while everyone was 'up in arms' about this and that point.)
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Leadership and Self-deception recommended to me by my boyfriend
Tuesdays with Morrie (a classic that was given to me off hand by a friend of a friend)
as well as picking away at these long time companions that I simply cannot chew up all at once:
The Letters of  Vincent Van Gogh
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

So many choices! And I haven't even gotten to books I requested for Christmas! Oh, and given the absurd class load I will have next term, I suppose I should get on that reading...but not for the first half of break.

I will never be a mermaid.

I am learning the full circle of stress--
learning it with all of its particles.
This is much more than a "beginning, middle, and end."
We are not talking about literary rising action
or falling action.
Though it has all of that.
I mean the living
--and the breathing--
bits of stress and anxiety.
It is like looking at yourself
in a mirror
underwater.
You are not allowed up until
you learn something,
but you never wanted to look
in the first place.

And so I learn the full circle of stress--
emotional CPR
and eye drops for chlorinated vision.
I learn the headaches
I receive just after the dreams start.
I learn not to ignore the dreams
if I expect to greet my life the next day.
I learn that the dreams aren't reality,
but they are a sort of mirror
for those who can bear to look.

But I have yet to learn
how to breathe underwater
and I am afraid
by how slowly I learn.