Gary doesn’t want to walk up hill to the rose garden this morning, especially with bears. (Probably just one black bear, but three sightings so far in Forest Park… not anywhere near the area we walk.) Climate change seems to be foremost in the news everywhere in the world but in our country. Recent heat here suggests this may have to change. Reading, writing, walking, and admiring trees.
Gary is filling the gap in his woodpile he so carefully straightened and vacuumed. He used to object if I called our cords of firewood “his” but no more. He has never allowed anyone to help him cut, clean, stack, or rearrange that pile. Photos follow.
This post began, the idea of it, last month when I was supposed to be working on the novel. I left a stub and then folded the post away.
I cannot believe it took me so long to actually look up the hardness of glass. It took Duck-Duck-Go all of two minutes to find everything I wanted to know.
When we search the beach, aside from agates and the odd diabetic needle or florescent tube, or the wonderful and rare fishing float, what we are really looking for is sea glass. I have wondered if glass floats more easily than stone, is its specific gravity is lower? Is it lighter and softer and that’s why glass is rare? It wears away?
When I was teaching high school English, I kept a Bible and the Qur’an on my shelves. I had the American stories collected by Erdoes and Ortiz. (Most of my books were free to borrow and generally came back, but that book and the side-by-side original Spanish and English translations of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had to be replaced again and again.) I had many novels, books of poetry, collections of short stories, literary journals, nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, realism, traditional and modern stories. I urged my students to be respectful of what is called “myth” because that word has become pejorative. Myths are most often the sacred stories of other cultures. Have respect.
My own book is not a myth, not sacred, magical, nonfiction, poetry, or even published. But it is done.
Yes, there will be further drafts, editing, revision, new words, passages cut, rewritten, moved. I may have crossed a line with Nadya’s or Amani’s story. Just for the next hours, let me say it is done. Just for today.
And if you or someone you know might be willing to help me make the story better, please let me know. [See below.]
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Even if you never took Art History, you might recognize this mural, a fresco in an ancient city on the Island of Crete. They put it on the cover of a recent translation of The Odyssey, which is a story about people living in a different part of the Mediterranean Sea and at least seven or eight hundred years later in history… which shows how much publishers care about accuracy, but never mind for now.
I want to brag about my progress in NaNo, but first I want to carp a bit about assumptions made any people who should know better.
Continue readingRalph Yarl is home from the hospital and recovering, “a miracle” considering he was shot in the head before the “terrified” gun-owner shot him a second time as he lay bleeding on his front porch. He’d come to the porch to pick up siblings but rang the bell on a Street instead of an Avenue—or was it the other way around? The shooter fired through the glass in the door. Ralph is 5’8″ and weighs 140 pounds. Perhaps he weighs a little less after hospitalization.
A fifteen year old girl in Georgia is taking birth control despite being a virgin because abortion rights have been ended in her state. She is scared to death that the law might require her to carry a rapist’s baby to term.
This month I have been thinking about whether a better world might be possible? I thought, maybe yes, and wrote a book to find out how. And I did not intend to write any of this post today. But there you are. We never know.
Word count, dental visits, complaints about the weather, lies, and the lying liars who tell them.
I should have got a photo. I caught Gary vacuuming his woodpile.
Gary and I are working on our future. Eventually the upkeep and isolation of the Arch Cape house will be too much. Our sons do not seem attached to the coast—oh, they say they miss it, but they seldom come out to visit. Once a year, or twice. They lead busy lives. That means we’ll be on our own for day to day assistance with what we’ll need if we try to stay there forever. Shopping, repairs… No simple workaround in our unincorporated community and no fewer local political issues. In our 70s and in good health, we manage fine now. We did, after all get the new roof on and Gary spread compost. We drive to Costco once a month. I’d like to think we might become ninety-something-year-olds who manage on their own till death takes us. But as a compulsive planner, I’m not counting on that.
We are working up courage to let go.
I woke too early this morning. That happens a lot these days. Sometimes I can get back to sleep. Sometimes I go to work. Lately I am knitting and revising my novel. Doesn’t that sound wonderful to myself: revising my novel!
