When I was a little girl, I was already fascinated by Japan—the architecture particularly, but also the clothing and food and toys. The fables. Because I lived in a suburb of Seattle, it was easy to visit the House of Rice or Trident Imports and lust after kimono and sandalwood chests.

I did not play with dolls much as a girl, but I had a pretty toy geisha on a stand that held place of honor in my bedroom. My farvorite model horse was made of paper and lacquer, gray with a traditional fancy saddle. I didn’t like that his mane stood straight up, but I could not coax it to lie over. I have that Japanese horse to this day. It must be nearly sixty years old.

There are few other things I still have from my grade school obsession. I read a book about how to build a Japanese doll house and I sewed bedding, made the storage box of balsa wood—those things are gone, but the scale vases from an import store are carefully stashed.

My father worked for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. I ate sushi for the first time in the early 60s. This was during a Japanese/American fisheries conference. I didn’t like sushi then, but I did later. I have gathered books on Japanese building, on the impact of Japanese woodblock prints on the Impressionists.

This is National Novel Writing Month, and I am writing first thing each day in pursuit of at least 70k (NaNo’s goal is only 50k).  This morning of Day 4, I have written past ten thousand words. My intention was to take a very old manuscript of 80k that I began in 1996 and update it. That isn’t quite what I am doing, as it turns out. I have outlined 25 chapters and I am writing beginning to end, a chapter a day. When I was writing that earlier novel that inspires this one, I wandered all over the place, beginning the middle to end and back, from the points of view of eight characters. So far I have hardly looked at that old manuscript to write this one. Instead, I am sticking with the here and now. There is a ghost cat, maybe. There might be a diary, which was the center point of the earlier novel. Maybe not. I haven’t gotten to that chapter. I write my 1667 words and then some more, and then a bit more, and when the chapter is done and I have my words, I stop.

When I meet my daily goal, I am allowed to do something else like look at Japanese dolls that I cannot afford on Ebay or watch a Korean historical romance (Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung) and admiring the costumes, one more episode till the end.

For many years, my life was cluttered like a Victorian drawing room—my time so tightly compressed, I barely had space to breathe, much less turn around. I worked eight hours, then came home and worked most of the evening. I neglected the house. I probably neglected my family and friends, though I did not notice at the time. The weekends were almost never time off—the shocking thing when I retired to teaching just a pair of college classes was discovering I did not need to work on Saturday and Sunday. I am still getting used to that now I am not teaching at all and all my time is wide open. Grace is emptiness.

Life can have space like a Japanese home. Floors empty to the walls, I cross freely from one side to another. There is the freedom to chose to sit on the floor and regain composure.

This clearing of space, this abandonment of possessions—well, the fabric for quilting, the yarn for weaving and knitting still arrive—this new-won spareness and simplicity.

But I am not talking literally. I am not living a cluttered life, but a gradually simplified, cleared away life.

My obligations are easier to count, easier to recognize and balance. My clothing is spaced in my closet. I keep removing what I do not wear. I give away what I do not use. The little girl with the red dress and white ghost dog greets me each morning in my kitchen—hanging just there above the jelly cabinet and between the Forest Ridge bookcase I use as my pantry and the pie safe with my grandmother’s porcelain custard cups.

I have a cake to bake, birthday gifts to wrap today. My coffee is cold. I need more sleep.

I am speaking literally.