Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always reliably had a box of chamomile tea that I very gradually drink. Usually it takes me years to actually finish a box, but when I do drink it, it brings up very specific memories of childhood and home. Maybe it’s the rarity itself that does that; that those memories are tied to it because they are so few and far between and so specific. My mother used to give me chamomile tea and warm milk when I couldn’t sleep as a child. I’m skeptical that either really promotes sleep, but somehow, it always did the trick. (That being said, I just Googled it, and apparently there is some scientific reason that chamomile promotes sleep… I guess there’s some antioxidant in it. I stand corrected.) The smell of chamomile is absolutely lovely. I think I’ll actually make myself a pot right now to counteract the soda I just drank to manically write up a syllabus.

So I just wrote up this sample syllabus about writing itself. I want to teach a course about the epistemology of writing. Anyway, that’s unrelated to herbs.

More about herbs. I don’t really have more to say about herbs, I guess. I’m sorry, I’m just getting worse every day. I should bow out of this thing already just to spare you all. Or maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and I’ll be brilliantly inspired to write another short story that I’ll gleefully read to my friends—look what I made in five minutes more-or-less! I suppose it’s worth sticking around just for one of those days to come again, even if it hasn’t in a few days. I should stop being so hard on myself.