When I am writing, I am happy -- healthy, at least, if sometimes dissatisfied or wallowing -- and these last few days I have been doing nothing but. Plus, the weather is beautiful, and I can't figure out a way to be unhappy when it's gorgeous outside. Nothing is out of focus -- no fog, no mist, no smoke. You can see clear to the ocean as you're driving down the mountain side, Birmingham laid out in the valley like some kind of tiny jigsaw. Windows down, hair whipping. You would not believe the number of convertibles on the road today. It is road-tripping weather, "Oxford Town" weather. A bluebird day.

Thursday, my poetry workshop left school on the little yellow ASFA bus for a poetry reading and lunch at Subway. We managed to miss nearly all my classes. We got back in time for another reading in the lecture hall by the seventh and eighth graders of the department. It's hard to convey how irresistible teenage boy writing is, when it's good, especially from these pre-pubescent boys with hair that curls out at the ends, button down shirts, or baseball caps and grass stains. Only two boys read, each of them comfortable and well spoken behind the podium.

Then yesterday was the Writing Today conference at Birmingham Southern. Carolyn and I went (as it was an excused absence from school) and hoarded complimentary coffee, trailing behind gaggles of Southern women and published writers for most of the day. We went to a Q & A with Rick Bragg, who signed two of my books (Ava's Man and All Over But the Shoutin'). Then Andre Codrescu gave a reading during lunch. He propped his laptop up on the podium and read off the screen -- something I haven't seen before, believe it or not. Both men were magnetic and entertaining, as you'd imagine from their writing.

How Bragg does it, I don't know; last night over the prologue of Ava's Man, it was everything I could do to keep from combusting or breaking into a fit of orgasms (heh -- that really does sound like a terrible affliction). The sentences taste good, the imagery is rich, the story weaves in and out in the lazy heat of the South. How anyone can write like that and not be from another planet is beyond me. Now I know what Sonny Brewer was talking about last week when he said Cormac McCarthy must be an alien to write so well. Brad Watson, too. The best part is that they all know and hang out with each other (with the exception of McCarthy, who is reclusive).

Then last night was the faculty reading with Beitelman, Flynn, and Abernathy (my English teacher), among a handful of others. Lots of writing and reading to be done this weekend, too. I've got to wuther in the heights, write some film reviews, and I have a feeling I won't be able to tear myself away from Bragg long enough to get all my assigned work done. Where do the weekends go?