“Where are you going with this?” 
                “Don’t know. Won’t know till I get there.” -Paul William Davies and Uzo Aduba (who voices the line), The Residence 

                I didn’t post this on Monday because my partner and I were camping for a few days, out in the woods. Trees to listen to. Downy woodpeckers to meet. Moments to share. It was so good to be out of our usual rhythms. 
                Last week my friend Ishita and I talked about reverse outlining. She just finished her PhD. I have one more year in mine.I’ve been going back through all the different notes and chapter drafts that make up my dissertation-in-progress. Looking at these pieces. Thinking about what needs to come before what, what needs to be cut, what needs more detail. There’s something wonderful in that practice. Somewhere—in Letters to a Young Poet?—Rainier Maria Rilke quips something like, “When you give someone flowers, you arrange them beforehand, don’t you?” Editing can be arranging flowers: considering shapes and colors before I offer them to you, hoping you’ll like them.
                While I’m arranging, I’ve been writing new poems in conversation with a few friends. We give each other a starting place, like Lampshape or Smudged Mirror, and then (usually that same day) we sit and feel and listen and write and follow the images that come up, the memories, the words, until we are somewhere, and we call that somewhere a poem. We share it with each other. We don’t know where we’re going until we get there. That’s how we find ourselves here.