It’s nearly noon and the best part of the day is gone. I only got about 4 hours of interrupted sleep last night, woken after 3 hours by a cat fight in my bedroom and then after 3 hours of wakefulness I slept for an hour, to be woken by a bad dream. So these last hours have been hazy, headachy and largely barren.

Bleh. I am grouchy.

I think a nap at the beach is called for. It is kind of a grey, cloudy day so Jericho Beach might not be too crowded. I have my blankets in the car and a book of essays about Emily Dickinson, so I will probably survive the day.

I did read a delightful essay in my very early morning wakefulness. By Conrad Aiken, “Emily Dickinson” was originally published in 1924, 31 years before Thomas Johnson’s edition of her complete poems was released. That means he wrote that essay based on the few, highly (and mostly poorly) edited versions of Dickinson’s work that were then available. And yet Aiken’s essay is wonderfully perceptive of Ms. Dickinson and prescient with regard to what some critics would do when pondering Emily’s personal oddities.  In other words, all the things he warned against have been picked up and the resultant theories shaken loose of all evidence, so fascinated have we become about the source of Emily’s “psychic trauma.”

Alan Tate’s essay of 1932, also called “Emily Dickinson,” is in the same volume. I haven’t read it yet;  I am looking forward to it, I have seen it cited so many times.

It’s nearly noon and I haven’t had breakfast yet. I am off to a cafe somewhere, then the beach for a nap. Then Tate.  The best recipe for grouch-hangover that I can devise.