Rear Window

Late at night I'm washing dishes and I turn to see the moon rising out my kitchen window. A beautiful waning gibbous moon, glowing golden in the night sky.

She took my breath away.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Holding Up the Sky

I've taken a week off work to work on a writing project. And my body has said, "No. Nope. No way." I had this big list of things I'd like to do around the house also. And my body has said, "Forget it, sister. You're done." 

I have been laying the occasional coat of paint on the cabinet. Yes, that's still in process. My contact at the publishing company is away until Tuesday, so there's no progress on the book. And my notebook with 120 pages of handwritten short fiction languishes in the book rack on my kitchen table, fourteen thousand (and some) words typed and at least that many to go. Then the story to construct around it. 

But my body tells me it craves rest and nourishment. 

I've been off for two days so far and my mind roils around missed opportunity. I tell myself I need to surrender to what I need to do for myself. The heatwave swells all around me and encourages a slower rhythm. I've tucked in to the stack of books next to my bed and have read a paragraph or two here or there. I notice that I am slowing down and my mind begins to rest. Have I forgotten how to slow down enough to give myself an entire day of Sabbath? I notice I've been driving myself too hard at work for far too long, carrying too much. 

Holding up the sky. 

Atlas is a Titan in Greek mythology whose name is derived from a root word that means "most enduring." I think about him when I get myself into these work marathons and I'm not getting enough rest. Atlas was doomed to hold up the sky following a power struggle between the Titans and the Olympians. I sometimes have my own power struggle between the titanic and the god-like. I am neither and when I pretend toward either extreme, I find myself holding up the sky and buckling under its weight.  

One day, the hero Perseus happened upon Atlas and asked for hospitality. Atlas, who had been once tricked by a hero, feared being tricked again and refused. Perseus pulled the severed head of Medusa out of his bag and showed it to Atlas, who turned to stone and became the mountain range which, even today, carries his name. It seems he's still holding up the sky. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

Joy Comes With the Morning, Again

The fragrance of plums and nectarines hangs heavy in my kitchen this morning. It brings me to joy. 

Joy was hanging heavily in my thoughts last night as I went to bed. I wrote late, after a long day and evening at work, and my prompt, which began with noticing slight improvements in medium-sized frustrations, carried me into remembering joy. It's one of the lovely surprises in following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

I went to bed with joy and woke with joy and remembered last year's writing about joy and am reminded that joy is choice. A perspective. We see what we expect to see. There's been a lot of research into that lately. I think of Pam Grout's little book E-Squared. I read it at a time in my life when everything was falling apart. Every day I expected to wake to more bad news, to more losses, to more things to grieve. The little experiments in her book helped me to shift my perceptions, to shift how I see. They may be little, but they are fierce in their teachings. 

And I still see gold cars every time I go out. 

They make me smile.

We're in a heat wave these days in southeastern Pennsylvania. My bowl of nectarines and plums has been sitting on the counter for a couple of days while the fruit ripens. With the urging of sweltering air, the nectarines were tipped at the edge of fermentation this morning. So I cut away the spoiled bits and cut the rest into a bowl and instead of eating them one-by-one over days I'm going to have to eat them as a feast. That's how joy works. Out of what first appears to be difficulty, challenge, sorrow, or desperation, something shifts, and what was hard becomes suddenly wondrous and juicy and sweet. Light instead of dark. Vitalizing instead of draining or dispiriting. 

As I put the bowl of freshly cut nectarines in my fridge I notice an abundance of fresh produce I've collected as the week has gone on. Corn on the cob in the husk. Asparagus standing tall in a small jar of water. Half a cantaloupe turned upside down on a plate.  Half an avocado dressed in its unused piece of skin. Brilliantly hued red pepper and orange carrots. Lemons, limes, a pear. My creative mind begins to play with ideas of good food to eat. I shift my gaze to the bowl on the kitchen cart - organic sweet potatoes from the farmer's market, new potatoes, sweet onions, garlic. I am surrounded by goodness and nourishing things. 

Joy comes with the morning, again.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Photo by Dan Cain. 

The story: Two images greeted me when I signed in to Facebook this morning. One, of the North Carolina rally and the president leading a crowd in hate speech and the other, this gorgeous image of a hummingbird in the desert taken by Dan Cain, an brilliant photographer who lives in Borrego Springs, CA and hikes the back country capturing extraordinary images. He finds them in his garden as well, which is where I think I read this image was captured. In the morning. We're inundated with images and stories every day - which ones will we take into our day and allow to shape us?  I'll take this one any day over the other and I feel fortunate to understand I have the choice.  

I see the embodiment of fierce joy in this image. In ancient indigenous Central American cultures, hummingbird is the heart warrior. Cultivating joy is heart warrior work, so I'll allow this image to inspire me to spend the day taking in the nectar and chasing away those beings and things that would prey on my joy. 

Tiny Treasures

The cabinet is looking better. More time. More coats of paint. 

Patience. Persistence. Effort.

And a day away from it. That was probably the best thing.

Sometimes a little space opens the way to a more positive perspective. I've got a couple of things going on this week that require my patience, persistence, effort, and a shift in perspective. 

The poetry book. 

The print proof arrived in the mail last week. The book is beautiful. And the table of contents is the wrong font size. It's disharmonious. Not going to work. So what does it mean? Another long delay while it is corrected. Extra cost. Mine, even though the mistake was not. Mine. It took me a couple of days to get my head around that. Extra cost and another delay.  

I was watering plants and discovered buds on my African violet plant. A gift from my daughter. The African violet I gave her as a house warming gift for her first apartment gifted her with an unexpected second plant which my daughter transplanted into another pot. She gave it to me as a gift. I feel such joy every time it blossoms. Those tiny purple buds form and appear suddenly. It's like discovering tiny treasures when it happens. And they are. Tiny treasures. My perspective shifts. Joy emerges, regardless of whatever else is going on.  

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Can't It Just Be a Simple Paint Job?

Right now I'm asking myself why I decided to paint this cabinet. It probably would have been better to have put it on eBay and bought something new. What was I thinking? Why all that work to remake something?

That's a great question.

If I let myself keep going down that thought path, I'd have a lot of "what was I thinking" questions for myself. "Why publish a poetry book?" "Why take on 100 days of daily writing again?" "Why work on a collection of short stories?" 

Why don't I just get an easy job and craft an easy life? Pick up a few easy hobbies and go to the beach?

Is there really such a thing as an easy life?

I don't think there is. I think it just might be a fantasy to help get us through times like this.

The cabinet sits open on a plastic drop cloth in my bedroom. It looks terrible. Different parts painted with the first or second coat of white. The old color is bleeding through. This piece of furniture has so many interior corners I wonder if I will ever be able to get it to look good. I begin to wonder if I should have left the interior shelves behind the glass-paned doors the original color and just painted the outside. I look at it and just know it's going to take more than parts of the three days I thought it might. It might even take weeks. 

Weeks is a long time to paint a piece of furniture.

My personality is to keep things light and simple. I can do complex, but I don't like it. 

Could painting this cabinet be some kind of quest?

I'd prefer it to be just a paint job, but I know that things like this can also be metaphors for bigger things in my life. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

Painting, Punting, Progressing

Exhale.

It's been one of those days. I talked to a few other people who report similar experiences -- the need to exhale and allow their bodies to relax, for oxygen to rush to the brain and to step back and rethink some things.

Talked to my publishing company about their production team's mistake with my table of contents. I could detail all the woes but it's the outcome, ultimately, that matters. I'll need to pay for it to be corrected and there's likely another several weeks to wait before receiving another print proof. When they get the table of contents fixed and not make any new errors, the book will be good to go.

My contact said to me, "Isn't it good enough? Do you really need to have these changes for one point size? You need to think about this."

I thought about it for a few breaths, and then when we got off the phone I thought about it some more. 

No. It's not good enough. It's disharmonious with the rest of the book and, if I were to let it go to press like this, every time I looked at it I would feel angry and disappointed. I've worked too hard and my work is worth being offered beautifully and harmoniously. 

So, yes. I really have to have this change for a single point size. It matters.

When we were on the phone I asked her if she'd seen the printed version. "No, I've only seen it on the screen," she said. So, she doesn't understand. But I do. 

It feels like punting, but I've made peace with it. I'll pore over the book again this evening to note anything else that might need to be adjusted. I'll see it as an opportunity and take full advantage of it. I'd noticed a couple of stylistic things in the proof that I'd missed. things that no one else would notice. Nothing to delay publication over, but as long as we're correcting the proof, we'll take care of those things too. 

To take my mind off all this, I got back to my painting project. The first part is done and in a few hours I'll lay down the second coat. It will dry over night before I turn it over and paint the top and main body of the cabinet. I've had to be strategic about this painting project. And I notice the same tendency to put in extra effort to get it just right. It's going into my home after all. It's worth my effort to create beauty and harmony there as well.

Getting lost in the painting helped me to regain my equilibrium and open to empathy. I don't envy my contact at the publishing company. She's between a rock and a hard place. Between authors who want excellent outcomes and her colleagues who want to save on costs. If they'd checked their work the first time around, we wouldn't be here now, so I'll insist on that going forward. And I'll be much more careful about what they've given me and not assume that they have the same level of impeccability around their work as I do. That sounds harsh, but experience has taught me that it's the case.

I look up and notice the sky just after sunset, streaked with pink that is deepening so beautifully I have to stop typing and simply watch. There's a peach tart cooling on the stove top. I've made it in the rustic French galette style. The kitchen is fragrant and all my senses are firing. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.

  

Painter's Tape and Crosby, Stills & Nash

I'm burning the midnight oil with an engrossing project.

I've got a cabinet that's been in my bathroom because I haven't known what to do with it. After you get divorced, there's an impulse to buy all new furniture and start over. But, unless you're wealthy, that's not very practical. So you do what you can do. I've got a mix of things. I'm slowly working through them, deciding what to keep and what to give away. Picking up some new things. A few years ago I repainted my dressers. Gave them a complete makeover. I didn't want to get rid of them because my grandfather made them and I like them, but they were in our bedroom throughout so they needed to be remade. I painted them white and bought new drawer pulls. They really look great, like they are a new creation. I'm hoping for the same results with the cabinet.

I've had it for years. It was my bedside table, a gift from my then-husband. I really love it, but it makes me sad to look at it. So something needs to change. I've been using a table I like for the last few years, but it's completely unsuitable. Not enough storage for books and doesn't match anything else in the bedroom. 

The thing is, it's a pretty complex piece to revamp. There's a drawer and glass doors. The hardware doesn't come off. The feet are an interesting shape and look challenging to paint. I'm sure I can do it, but it's going to take some work, some thought, a bit of strategy, and lots of patience. It's also going to take some time. Tonight I'm taping the glass. It's exacting work because there are six panes edged in wood and I don't want to have to scrape the glass after I'm done. So I'm sitting on a stool, with the cabinet tipped back on a laundry basket so I have a good angle, taping the glass. I've had to lift and re-tape a few times and have had to go over a few spots where my line has not been exact.

It's funny. I can be impulsive about these things. I think to myself, "No problem. I can do this." I go out and buy paint and other supplies and then I get home and really look at the cabinet and realize that the project is a bit more complex than I'd expected. For example, the shelves inside the glass doors are also going to need to be painted. So the work will happen in layers. The inside of the drawer probably needs to be painted also. And before I paint anything else, I'll have to flip it over and do the feet. That will save me a lot of aggravation in the long run.

It's a great metaphor for other things. Like remaking your life after divorce. 

And it needs to get done, so you put on Crosby, Stills & Nash and get to work. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.