Pic of the Day

TGIF!

I’m so glad it’s Friday. This has been a very busy week at work, and I need some time away from the office. I’m not sure what, if anything, I’ll do this weekend besides get some much-needed rest. The only two things I know for sure are that I’ll watch some college football tomorrow and try out a few new recipes over the weekend.

TGIF! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Pic of the Day

Dream A Little Dream of Me

Today was one of those rare mornings when I actually wanted to get out of bed. Well, not the first time I woke up, when Isabella decided she needed to be fed, but the second time. I had been having a wonderful dream.

The dream unfolded as a series of brief scenes showing the progression of a new relationship. He was handsome and about my age, and it began with a hookup arranged through one of the apps. Later, we saw each other online again and decided to meet up a second time. Eventually, we exchanged numbers and became regular fuck buddies. There was no longer any need to search the apps; all it took was a horny text.

Each time we got together, though, we talked a little more and began genuinely getting to know one another. One evening, I was cooking when he texted. After we finished with the usual reason for his visit, I invited him to stay for dinner. Then he invited me to his place for dinner. That led to a few “Netflix and chill” evenings that involved more Netflix—and more conversation—than our earlier encounters had.

Eventually, I had an event to attend and was allowed to bring a plus-one, so I asked whether he wanted to come with me. After that, we began seeing each other outside our apartments. We went on actual dates. We even took a trip together.

The dream was made up of all these small moments in the building of a relationship. It was almost as though I were watching everything from above. Each scene lasted only briefly, yet somehow I understood the larger story connecting them.

After watching us go on a few dates, I woke up before the dream could progress any further. Sadly, it was only a dream.

Of course, there are couples who met on Grindr and eventually built lasting relationships. Still, if you’ve ever used Grindr, you know that it tends to be more of a “come and go” situation—although “come” might be spelled a little differently. That was fine when I was younger, but these days, it would be nice to find something more: someone to talk to, cook with, travel with, and share all those little moments that gradually turn a hookup into a relationship.

But, as I said, it was only a dream.

Pic of the Day

A Strange Day

Yesterday was kind of a strange day. Usually, when I have a migraine, it either comes on suddenly or is already there when I wake up. Sometimes the pain is mild enough that I can go about my day. Those are the migraines I have almost every day, and if I stay busy, I can usually push the pain to the back of my mind.

Other days, the pain is so intense that every smell, bright light, or noise makes it worse. Those are the migraines that hurt so much that even resting my head on a pillow is painful, and all I can do is hope I fall asleep quickly. I’ve had headaches intense enough to wake me in the middle of the night. Thankfully, the medications I take mostly prevent those severe migraines unless there is precipitation in the forecast, and even then, the medicine usually moderates them. Then there are migraines when the pain falls somewhere between those two extremes.

Yesterday’s migraine was different.

I saw an aura around lunchtime, and the migraine initially seemed like one of the milder ones—but it felt different in a way I can’t fully explain. At first, the worst part wasn’t the pain but the secondary symptoms. Noise was the least troublesome, but my sense of smell became incredibly intense. I had to stop by the grocery store on my way home, and the smells of the store and the people in it made it difficult not to vomit. The bakery, the seafood department, people wearing too much perfume, and those not wearing enough deodorant—what I call the “Vermont funk”—were all overwhelming. Light became almost as troublesome, so I spent most of last night in the dark.

As I said, my migraines usually come on suddenly and either remain at their original pain level or become much worse fairly quickly. This one began slowly and continued intensifying over several hours until the entire right side of my head was screaming in pain. Literally, the tinnitus became so loud that it felt as though my head were screaming. My right eye felt as if an ice pick had been driven through it and was coming out at the base of my skull. The pain covered the whole right side of my head, but it was most intense in those two places.

Another symptom was what is often called migraine brain fog or cognitive dysfunction. I struggled to concentrate, follow a conversation, or formulate a response. Even the simplest thoughts required more effort than they should have.

I was relieved when I finally managed to fall asleep, and I woke up feeling much better. I still have a shadow headache this morning, but I can handle that. I have too much work to do as I prepare for classes and meetings, so perhaps staying busy will help keep it in the background. I’m just praying that this shadow migraine remains a shadow and doesn’t decide to return in full force.

Pic of the Day

[This is my letter to the World]

[This is my letter to the World]

By Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me

About the Poem 

“This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me—” may be one of the most quietly heartbreaking openings in poetry. Emily Dickinson presents her poem as a letter sent to a world that has never answered her. She writes anyway, knowing that her words will be entrusted to “Hands I cannot see”—future readers whose reactions she cannot predict or control.

On its surface, the poem concerns Dickinson’s relationship with Nature. Nature has shared something with her, and she has attempted to communicate that message through her poetry. Yet Dickinson never explains precisely what this “simple News” might be. Perhaps it cannot be explained directly. It must be felt through the natural world and translated through poetry.

However, the poem can also be read more personally. Dickinson speaks as someone who feels separated from the larger world—someone who possesses an inner truth that others have neither acknowledged nor attempted to understand. She can send her message outward, but she cannot make the world respond. All she can do is ask those who eventually receive it to “Judge tenderly—of Me.”

That plea may feel especially familiar to LGBTQ+ readers. For much of history, our stories have been written for a world that did not write back—or, when it did respond, answered with condemnation. People concealed their love in letters, poems, diaries, and carefully chosen words because speaking plainly could cost them their families, their reputations, their freedom, or even their lives. They entrusted their truth to “Hands” they could not see, hoping that someone in another place or another time might finally understand.

The poem does not explicitly describe romantic love between women. The “Her” Dickinson loves is most directly Nature, which she personifies as feminine. Nevertheless, knowing that Dickinson wrote passionate and intimate letters to her friend and sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson gives the poem additional resonance. Dickinson understood what it meant to place intense feeling into words and send those words toward someone she loved. Whether her relationship with Susan was romantic, sexual, or something that does not fit neatly into our modern categories remains debated, but the depth of that attachment is difficult to dismiss.

A queer reading, therefore, does not require us to claim that the poem is secretly addressed to a female lover. Instead, we can recognize something profoundly queer in its emotional situation: a private self reaching toward an indifferent world, carrying a message of love and asking not merely to be heard, but to be treated gently.

“Judge tenderly—of Me” is not an apology. Dickinson does not ask permission to love Nature, to write poetry, or to see the world differently. She asks only that those who receive her message resist the impulse to condemn what they may not fully understand.

Perhaps that is the most enduring “News” this little poem carries. We may never completely know another person’s heart, but we can choose tenderness over judgment. For LGBTQ+ people—and for anyone who has ever felt unseen—that choice can make all the difference.

“This is my letter to the World” is believed to have been written around 1862 or 1863, during one of the most productive periods of Emily Dickinson’s life. Like nearly all her poems, it was originally untitled; its first line is now used as its title. It is commonly identified as poem 441 in Thomas H. Johnson’s edition of Dickinson’s poetry and poem 519 in R. W. Franklin’s later edition.

In only eight lines, Dickinson explores isolation, artistic creation, nature, posterity, and the vulnerability of placing one’s words before unknown readers. Her characteristic dashes interrupt the poem’s rhythm, allowing certain words and ideas to linger. The final request—“Judge tenderly—of Me”—turns the poem from a declaration into an intimate appeal for compassion.

The poem was not published until after Dickinson’s death. Like the “Hands” she imagined but could not see, generations of readers have received her message and interpreted it through their own experiences.

About the Poet

Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She spent most of her life at her family’s home, the Homestead, and became increasingly private as she grew older. Although she wrote nearly 1,800 poems, only a small number appeared in print during her lifetime, often altered by editors to conform to conventional punctuation, capitalization, and rhyme.

Dickinson maintained several important relationships through letters, but none has inspired more interest than her bond with Susan Gilbert Dickinson, a childhood friend who later married Dickinson’s brother Austin and lived next door at the Evergreens. Emily sent Susan hundreds of poems and letters containing language that was sometimes passionate, intimate, and erotic. Scholars continue to debate the precise nature of their relationship, but Susan was unquestionably one of Dickinson’s most important emotional and literary companions.

Dickinson died on May 15, 1886, at the age of fifty-five. After her death, her younger sister Lavinia discovered the hundreds of poems Dickinson had carefully preserved. The world that had never written to her finally received her letter—and it has been reading it ever since.

Pic of the Day

Ear Worms 👂🪱

Earworms are strange things. Sometimes, something you hear sets one off. Other times, you wake up with a song already playing in your head, and it simply refuses to go away. Sometimes, though, it takes me a little while to recognize the song.

That happened this morning. Almost as soon as Isabella woke me, the words “Wake me up when…” began running through my mind. At first, I couldn’t remember what came next. When exactly did the singer want to be awakened?

Then it finally hit me: “Wake me up when September ends.”

I paused and wondered, Are those really the lyrics? A quick Google search confirmed that they are not only the lyrics but also the title of Green Day’s 2005 song “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” The song begins:

Summer has come and passed

The innocent can never last

Wake me up when September ends

The song itself is quite sad, but its appearance in my head this morning struck me as funny. I think my earworm was simply trying to tell me that I wasn’t ready to get out of bed. Unfortunately, Isabella is not a patient critter, and she had no intention of letting me sleep until the end of September.

So, I got up and fed her. She woke me long before September ended—we aren’t even halfway through the month.

Note: An earworm is a song or tune that becomes stuck in your head and repeats itself involuntarily.