the silence is eclectic by Odilia Rivera-Santos

I have been on a long sabbatical from blogposting. .. watching the whirlwind of social media activity from a safe distance and racing through winter as I overuse the gerund. 

I've been teaching four completely different groups of students, which served my writing well. 

There are new voices added to the tidy collection of voice possibilities.

I've worked with students from Kazakhstan, Brazil, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, France, and the Dominican Republic. 

In-between the busyness of working with human beings, I have continued work on creative projects -- on the bus, in bed right before falling into the magical realms of sleep and on the elliptical.

In-between snippets of Frida and other movies I'd never seen, I painted my apartment gallery white, imagining the sketches I will draw to decorate the walls. 

For some reason, after so many thousands of words, I've begun to crave an exploration into visual art. 

I want gray ink and gray pencil to draw on bright white paper to see what else is rattling inside this brain. 

It is a sleepy afternoon in Manhattan with the faraway sound of ambulance and cart and child and honk and squeak from a faulty faucett.