before the stoneday blows the men and animal-swarms empty

That's a line from Paul Celan.

Hello neglected readers, neglected intent. One would think that my own crush in Kansas would have made for ample posting here, but somehow, things worked out differently. My writing has proceeded apace, as they say, but on many other projects.

For instance, Hanae and I signed our contracts with Heyday Books on Wednesday for Kodoku.

It lives.

But I have no time to pause. Remember: "It's later than you think."

My work has been filled recently with a Minotaur, the mythical city Quivera, a giant named Hunger, the diaspora of pigeons, and, today, the ancient oak forest of Long Valley, north Monterey Co, and the crack of a whip.

Tomorrow I'm finally going to make the pilgrimage to Tor House, the stone home built by Robinson Jeffers and his son. Robinson Jeffers is one of the finest poets of the 20th Century but only a handful of people know it. Here, I'll prove it.

Tor House

If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark leaved- Australians or the coast cypress, haggard
with storm drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for the foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers had the art
to make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten thousand years:
it is the granite knoll on the granite
and lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth of the Carmel
River-Valley, these four will remain
in the change of names. You will know it by the wild sea-fragrance of the wind
though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;
You will know it by the valley inland that our sun and our moon were born from
before the poles changed; and Orion in December
evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like a lamp-lighted bridge.
Come in the morning you will see white gulls
weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon
their dance companion, a ghost walking
by daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in the world.
My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably
here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not dancing on wind
with the mad wings and the day moon.

--Robinson Jeffers

Of more topical things I will speak later.