The workday started with being scolded by a supervisor who formerly was very gentle. Scolded for speaking. Not for what I was saying, but for speaking at all. Then, the team member who drew me most because he was like a disinterested garrulous uncle tore into a tantrum. It was about numbers, slope on a graph, and his face showed a fury clearly unrelated to me or to slope--but he aimed that fury toward me. I was rattled for some time with no place to hide.

Then I was cornered in the night by a traveling New York poet. An interaction I haven’t figured out but he was intent on me and talked as though this might be his last chance to express his theories, fears, griefs and desires.

I had better luck with women, the supervisor who shared about her youth in Thailand, the German poet who has lived in Austin these past 20 years. I read a sister-poet’s fine work in her absence at the poetry festival. Four poems.
And the silent 15 minutes with my yoga partner.

Hail dented the car and made explosive noises as I drove home. Lightning exploded like bombs in the middle of the night. (Have you noticed the different ways lightning can sound? No rumbling last night. Explosion after explosion.) The phone rang twice at 5:30 AM during my last half hour of too little rest.

A lot of disturbances, but despite the body going into alert mode, I see now never was I in danger.

It was during the quarter hour of yoga and meditation I felt grounded and whole. It is where I went readily, happily. Contact with stillness that is there even as lightning strikes.