I went to the dentist this morning for my semiannual cleaning, and while their office is super easy to get to from my office, and was really easy to get to from my old apartment, it is not particularly convenient from where I live now, and so to avoid excessive transfers, I decided to take a car. And it was great - the ride took exactly an hour and got me there exactly on time (by which I mean, 10 minutes before my appointment, and they took me right in), but I don't know how people drive into the city every day. The traffic was awful and I don't think I'm claustrophobic, and I generally don't mind tunnels, but I did not like crawling through the Midtown Tunnel two feet at a time at all. *shudders*

Anyway, everything's fine - I need to floss more, as usual, and also the hygienist did not stop talking but like, she had her hands in my mouth so I couldn't respond, but she was so busy talking that at one point she caught my lower lip in the sander polisher (I don't know why I keep calling it a sander!) and that was really painful!

Then I went to the office and mostly worked, though the thing about being in the office is that people like to stop by the chat (also, people notice when the big boss comes in late and leaves early and spends the few hours she's in in a conference room rather than in the open office like the rest of us - they notice and they tell me about it like I didn't already know *hands*), and that breaks my momentum, so either nothing else gets done (if it happens after 3:30) or it takes me twenty minutes of futzing around to get back on track.

Anyway, reading Wednesday and I am still reading Fellowship of the Ring in a slow and meandering fashion. I'm at the Council of Elrond now and Legolas has just revealed that Gollum escaped his imprisonment.

I do want to say that for the first time in many, many years, I didn't just skip Tom Bombadil, and maybe I have more patience for him now? I still think he's a little annoying but he also reminded me of Paddington this time around, with his blue coat and yellow boots, so I just imagined him as Paddington and that made him less annoying (and more like Beorn, who is also a weirdo but with less rhyming)? But also GOLDBERRY. The River-daughter. Needs less Tom and more Goldberry is my thought this time around. Is she the genius loci of the Withywindle? Is Tom the genius loci of that area he lives in? Are they Ainur? Some form of Maiar? inquiring minds want to know! But not really that much because they are not particularly important to the story and I'm glad they didn't make it into the movies but Goldberry! I want to know more about her.

And in that spirit, here's today's poem:

The River

This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we'd have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks

of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.

Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way

with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.

-John Glenday

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