George and I were buddies who used to send letters and poems to each other. As George's onetime T.A. in Freshman English, I remember wishing that George could connect with his Greek heritage in a way that would sustain him. I wished that he would could share that and serve as witness to his father's contributions. I even wondered what I could learn if he went to the Greek islands and sent back his impressions.

So I was primed, and then my housemate delivered his lyrical reminiscences. So I'm getting some pleasure trying to incubate this and really making myself do it.

Another thing that has given a little shot of pleasure lately: I met the landscape architect James Yamaguchi recently. When I found out he was involved in restoring the 17-acre Kubota Gardens in Rainer Valley, I got excited and sent him a copy of my poetry book. I used to love visiting the Kubota Garden on my own. (Dan and Heidi introduced me to it in 1990.) It was little visited and overgrown. The Kubota family had been in the business of landscaping, and they used the garden as a nursery. But it was also a work of landscaping art. The family was taken away to an internment camp during the war, and the garden was abandoned. Neighbors respected the Kubota's rights to it. When they came back, old man Kubota eventually gave it as a gift to Seattle City Parks. But it needs to be reclaimed.

Jim Yamaguchi's dad was also a landscaper in Seattle, and was a friend of the Kubotas. That's why Jim chose the field of landscape design. And maybe that's why Seattle Parks awarded him this restoration contract. (He has done landscape designs for many open areas in Seattle.)

Anyway, I recently got an e-mail from Jim and he said he enjoyed reading over my poetry book several times. He said that he had not taken time to read poetry since his student days, but he feels he was doing something in his design of open spaces similar to what I am doing in my poems.

He is going to provide me some historical background on the Kubota family and on his approach to restoration. I will probably get a chance to visit the garden and hear Jim's ideas on landscape art. I hope I can write a poem about the Kubota garden, the way I wrote one about the Seattle Chinese Garden in South Seattle.

I'm also feeling positive about my "Answers to Tang Atmospheres". I think I have a chance at making this an extended series. I'm excited that this vein of writing opened up because I was stimulated by several things at once: 1) The great house sitting opportunity with a housemate who is a poet at heart. 2) Reading Jin Shengtan's commentaries on Tang poems. I came back to these poems I knew well, and was struck that they have added another layer of meaning for me. Also, Jin's commentaries show his own journey around these poems in which he tries to put his own stamp on feeling them. 3) Selecting Yan Li epigrams. Working with these witty sayings clued me in that I can use wit to get the juices flowing. I don't have to always thrash around, drag myself over the coals, give myself a hard time saying something overarching. 4) Reading a new selection of Yi Sha poems that someone sent me. His rascal persona and his attempt to move the concrete-yet-suggestive clarity of Tang poetry into surveying the human landscape.