I started writing a novel yesterday and counted the days until I should have a rough draft done ( taking time off for some weekends and moose hunting and all that) — Dec 2!
I should be prompted to blog and write other things too, since I am back at regular “work,” whatever that means. After finishing my first 1,000 word morning I went to work whitewashing pine boards for the walls in the old garage re-model that has blossomed into a lovely little new guest house– somehow– and now also needs to be finished by early December when our son and his family will need it for a six week holiday stay from Australia. (The Aussies want to see snow.) So here I am: mornings writing and exercising and afternoons in my home building clothes. ( I did a weight workout today and a good thing too, as I just read the NY Times and they say that will help me live longer, and I have a lot to do.)
As I was finishing up staining yesterday, a friend pulled in with some fresh salmon and halibut. He’s been fishing down by Pelican all summer. He looked tired from being on his boat but had time for a glass of wine in the kitchen. He looked at the paint covering my hands, pants, shirt– and said, “You do know you’re supposed to keep that on the brush?” I said I know, and my back hurts, too. He said this season’s trolling banged him up in surprising ways– it’s not like we are getting older or anything– it’s not that at all — just a silly slip, and he got this huge bruise on his ribs. My painting is limited by how long my back can take the posture. But surely a fifteen year-old would find it uncomfortable after three hours?
Maybe it’s a bit of this and maybe it’s because my mother’s birthday is tomorrow (she would have been 86, but she died at 71) but I am more concerned about picking up the pace of my days. And yet, Simone Weil is right: absolute attention is prayer, and seems so neccesary right now. Doing nothing except admiring the views has never felt more urgent. Lately I have been stopped in my tracks, literally, by a breeching whale in Tenakee, a feeding sealion in the river, and by an enormous porcupine on the trail. The dogs stopped too, all three of them after I screamed “NO!” We all watched it waddle off, swinging it’s fat, prickly, bear-size butt, and I thought of one of the lines I had to memorize in English class– “Oh, wonder, how many goodly creatures there are here.” Who invented porcupines?
This morning dawn was rich in too many ways to count– the fog, the mountains, the river, the beach grasses and roses, The smells of low tide, mown lawn, the wet cedar on the deck– and mostly the abundance of all things green and growing in the final sprint to winter — the changing light and darker nights, the joy and sadness the last days of the summer always have. School even started this week.
Maybe the next 10 years are the August of my life—bursting with creativity, with energy, with abundance- And may they be full of the people I love too. It will be a busy Christmas around here. All five kids, their spouses and ten grandchildren. Think about that! How did this happen? When? (“The kids are growin’ up Mom,” my son used to say when they were all in high school and college and I’d want to know how late they planned to stay out.) Now my oldest granddaughter is in junior high here and reading Shakespeare because her best friend suggested it. The rest of that quote from The Tempest? “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such creatures in it.”
One more thing: There are two mature mountain ash trees in the yard. One was about two feet tall when I planted it, and is now fat-trunked, tall enough to block the view and loaded with red berries and feathered green leaves. As I was out on the deck doing nothing this morning, both trees began to move, shaking their moppy heads in what could only be called delight, but there wasn’t enough wind for such motion — and that’s when I saw the swarm of robins and wrens on the berries, thick as bees in the May dandelions. (I hope this makes you as happy as it does me.)
