An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
After I wrote the first four novels, after I’d committed to this one, after the years of writing and revising, authenticity edits and developmental edits, after proofreading and proofreading again. After I finally decide it’s perfect [it isn’t], there is the next step. Next I submit to agents or small presses who will look at unagented novels. That does not go well for my book.
The world might be better once we’re mostly gone.
Suppose I decide to self-publish? It was always an option. The publishers who would do so much of the work in design and promotion were well out of my budget. Eventually I found a printer who works with small presses and decided to trust them. Books are out and in the mail, with 50 of 100 gone. The process took a while.
Six months ago, Gary and I stopped drinking altogether. Gary tells people who ask that he stopped because I asked him to as a birthday present. Okay. Maybe. It saves money, spares us hangovers, and mostly preserves our minds. We would deal with the pile of diapers, the alcove deep in gin bottles, and the damage—the work cleaning up the mess in our rental ADU had only just begun. For years, Gary talked to our longtime tenant most every day, sometimes for an hour or more. He’d been afraid the man would kill someone or at least himself driving drunk. Fortunately, he survived. We finished the repairs and improvements right at the beginning of last month.
Three black oystercatchers (only two visible at lower right)—the parents who nest nearby, and this year’s juvenile has flown out of the frame. They are my favorite bird.
Yesterday, we disagreed about how far to walk before heading out for the day. I said four miles, Gary lobbied for two. We were a few hundred yards out when the hail began. If we’d waited ten or fifteen minutes, we wouldn’t have been wet by the time we scampered home!
I’m running a mile every other day now. Not easily, but I’m making quicker progress than I had any right to hope for. I started with a challenging half mile on the April Fool’s Day—yes, a joke on myself and also the anniversary of my first run decades ago. I’m starting from scratch—no condition at all. Last year, I injured my feet doing very long planks, and then again while on my hands and knees working on that rental. Gary pruned (butchered) the escalonia in order to give the new tenants a broader and clear view of the ocean. Apparently, they don’t look west and hadn’t noticed. sigh I’ve been walking daily but had been injured out for most of a year. At my age, “coming back” is not a given.
The other morning there was only the gale wind and a little rain. Tuesday, there was a “dust devil” in the sand just up shore from where we walked. We walked about four miles, all the way to the waterfall just south of Hug Point. The rain started right then and poured all the way home, right into our face with a full gale. A dead owl, we think, lay in the tideline, head naked, short and dark hooked beak, dark flight feathers well over 12″ long, barred tail. By the time we got home, we were soaked and cold, had oatmeal for breakfast, curry for dinner, and went to bed early. But this morning I managed my planned 1-mile run. Best I can tell, I’m managing miles in under 12 minutes, which is not bad considering everything. My realistic goal is a 5k run by August. My “secret hope” is to do the Bridge Crossing in October again. That’s a 10k, 6.2 miles, and usually bad weather, but I’ve done it several times. At least Gary I expect to do the Zoo walk/run in Portland on Thanksgiving—that ranges from a 5k to 6k, with no warning in advance of distance—and we can walk as much of it as we choose. I ran it last fall.
In the mean time, Gary is playing his guitar as I began writing this post on Wednesday morning. That alone could make me cry. It’s been too long, his fingers sore and cracked, but he rested after our soaking walk, and maybe he’s back. He’s taken each one out and tuned it, played a bit. He says his guitars are “not in bad shape. I don’t see any bad things.”
The focal fabric of my next quilt, “Otherland II”. This is a hand-dyed “batik” and I’ve studied on it for a couple of decades, maybe, trying to decide how to cut it. It’s just so gorgeous on its own. Last month, I thought I’d cut triangles—a design I’ll save—because this will zigzag.
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It’s a rare fabric, not stenciled or printed, but with both color and resist hand applied—spaced and dripped—and similar in process to the fabric in the quilt top waiting for quilting in my closet. I hope to be able to have this new quilt and the earlier “Otherland I”, below, machine quilted this summer.
Shown in progress. The center of “Motherland I” is done but only the lower portion of the wide border—with fabrics laid out for top and sides of the border. All the batiks used here are atypical. The background fabric in the center panel in not actually “batik” but another more hands-on technique. This top is complete and waiting with the backing fabric for me to spare the money to have it quilted.
In other news, I have chosen a press for self-publishing my novel. No money for it at the moment since it all went on repairs, but in the fall, perhaps. I am thinking of my birthday in October. A friend has given me notes on my ghost story, so there’s that to work on.
Hello, readers. I wrote the post below before Good was murdered. Good was murdered. I have read the articles, the defense by MAGA, the responses from newspapers around the world by reporters who watched all the videos, and comments from all sides. It is not a capital offense to slowly drive away from someone—even if those someones were police officers, which they weren’t. Not even then is it okay to shoot someone three times in the head… and people bragging about it? This isn’t my country, the country founded on the ideals of respecting every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But here, what I was worried about before:
A couple of things: I am reading Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen, and this morning I found Allison K. Williams’s post “There Is No Closure: Stop Organizing and Start Writing” was in my feed on Tuesday. Despite a rich life deeply engaged in literature or because of that, Allison K. Williams wants closure with her writing.
They connected in my experience.
When I was a girl these large green anemones [Anthopleura xanthogrammica, or the giant green anemone] were far less common that the smaller mauve-violet ones. Today they are everywhere.Continue reading →
When I was teaching persuasive writing, I always began with frames—a general structure on which to hang ideas. The 5-paragraph essay I was taught when I was an adolescent seems pretty basic, but it’s not a bad place to start. An introductory paragraph explains the issue and ends with a thesis, the main idea. Three body paragraphs offer three supporting reasons. The conclusion restates everything. I generally added another paragraph just before the conclusion reviewing opposing views and explaining why they’re wrong.
It’s a beautiful dress and the embroidery tells many stories. As a visual and verbal artist, I care how everything looks on the page. Every word. Every line-break. This work was conceived by the visionary artist Kirstie Macleod. “The garment has been worked on by ‘367 women/girls, 11 men/boys and 2 non-binary artists from 51 countries‘, according to RedDressEmbroidery.com.“Follow a link here to learn more about the Red Dress Project.Continue reading →
Zora Neale Hurston shaved ten years off her age early in her life, at least partly because circumstances made her entry into college late and she was embarrassed to be a decade older than her freshman peers. But she was also a woman who lived in a society used to women denying their age. She got away with her lie until long after she died.
This is one of my favorite photos. It’s my desktop image just now.
Gary caught me working on this and when I told him it was a new blog post, he said, “Finally!” I had “resolutions” for 2024. Some of those plans fell apart and some went better than I dared hope and shifted my goals. Toward the end of the year I began making plans for 2025. Those have shifted too.
I was reading an article about why older people need more friends and suggestions about how to find them (do something different, take up a hobby or join a club) when a woman we met on the beach a couple of times this week and chatted to, rang our garage doorbell and offered her contact information.
Life is wonderful that way sometimes. Full up with wonder.
Early snapshots from my family’s summers at Arch Cape. One at left is dated 1913 when this was still called Cannon Beach. In the middle is the old “beach house” my family used Memorial Day to Labor Day until the 1940s. At right is the first cannon found onshore in 1846 (rediscovered in 1898 according to Wikipedia), my grandmother Fay Fletcher Jackson Smith just after the Great War, and my Aunt Marcia as a toddler in 1925. Gary insists we sort them all by the end of summer. He warns: “It’s going to take weeks.”Continue reading →
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, “one of the best, and best-known” critiques of applied statistics. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent’s point. The phrase was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain, who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.
—Wikipedia
A double rainbow over the ocean: the fact is a splintering of light passing through mist. My opinion is “Beautiful!”
I’ve been thinking about lies and opinions lately. People have lied to me, of course. My parents lied about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and I figured that out when I was five and bore them no grudge. People admire and nod in response because they think that is polite of them. I might not even want to hear the truth, but I am grown up now and almost never want the lie.
Just yesterday a workman lied to me about transgressing onto our property. And I understood his reasons. He is not well-paid and needs the work and has been told to make nice because my husband is furious about something that had they asked he probably would not have minded.
I am not going to share the cover design, but I cannot resist sharing the painting that inspired me. It is the painting that matters:
Woman In The Weeds (2023) by Ruth Hunter
Thank you, Ruth!
Ruth Hunter is a painter in oils and cold wax who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. I first met her and fell for her work in the Waterstone Gallery earlier this year. She has chosen to allow me to use the image above—a generous choice. To me this woman sitting patiently in the weeds is Gena, my primary character in All the Daughters Sing. I love Ruth’s work, from the first one I saw to everything on her website, but this one… pure magic for me.
Go have a look at the work of Ruth Hunter. She has a show coming up next month (November 2023) in the Citron Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. Wish I were there.
Yes, I will count both fiction and review as two even though in the same publication.
Issue 34:1 of CALYX Journal has gone to press and my story “The Promised Hour” is featured on the announcement page where you can read it. In the same issue is my review of the marvelous and award-winning short story collection by Wendy Wimmer. I was most fortunate to be sent a review copy of Entry Level: Stories. Those stories have stayed with me, digging around in my subconscious and sending me off on wild flights of discovery. Just to mention one story: A wry entity sends dreams to sleepers. After an unpleasant dream the dreamer tries to lock dreams out by using sleeping pills. Oh, dear, that’s not going to go well.
Brown pelicans have been fishing right out front all this month. I am, of course, not close to this bird but using my camera zoom. Sometimes, when I zoom out all the way, I struggle to hold the lens steady.
Shall I consider these two publications due out next month recompense for being cussed out this morning? Yes, yes, I shall. Plus a reminder of my podcast introduction to All the Daughters Sing. That novel is making the rounds. Two full MS requests so far.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 