her able hands

My feet are still wet from my little morning walkabout with the camera. Everything is sodden and dripping and rich with the sound of crickets. I got up before Lila and had my first cup of Love Buzz coffee, breezed through my feed reader and then answered the call of the foggy, still morning.

I love how looking through the little woods makes it feel as if we live in the wilderness, when just on the other side of that 40 foot wide tract of trees, the neighborhood unfolds like a patchwork quilt of backyards. Let’s not think about how weedy that perennial bed has become, okay? Those are the thoughts that can ruin a girl’s good mood.

This is my favorite kind of summer morning, especially on a weekend, slow and quiet. The air is heavy, so much moisture in it that the four balls of play-dough Lila left out of their containers, flattened into pancakes on the dining room table last night were still as fresh and pliable as brand new. She’s up now and enjoying the pop-up princess castle play tent I scored from work yesterday. Hanging out in it, singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow in her warble-y little voice.

The plan is a trip to the farmers’ market with Cheril after she gets back from her yoga class. She’ll hang with Lila while I get a few more quickie interviews done with the folks who don’t have email. Then a run to the grocery store for a few essentials. After that, home to clean. The garden is much to wet too work in, so I’m going to enjoy the forced break by taking care of some of the basics that I’ve let slide in recent weeks. It’s incredible to me how fast the piles grow, how laundry breeds itself, how out of my control it all gets with just a few days of inattention.

I have some editing to finish for my friend’s website, but I did the main of it on paper last night while sipping a cold Corona, and now I just have to edit the actual file. Hopefully Nancy and Richard, the amazing second-career garlic farmers will be able to meet to go over the logo work I’m doing for them. We’re close to a final, and I’d love to get that one project crossed off my mental list by the end of the weekend. Will be so cool to see the logo on t-shirts around town! They should also consider tote-bags.

Lisa and I were chatting yesterday about lists, priorities and overwhelm. It helped. I mean, the overwhelm is still strong, but I’m just going to approach it all from the point of what I can do right now. She also pointed me to this amazing essay by Greil Marcus. Reading it? It was like an explosion of connection. I’ve been so stuck in my other writing. The YA novel hit a wall. The essays. The private journaling. All because I have been unable to draw correlations or let myself explore my own past.

Whenever I sit down with the intention to write something other than a work project or this blog, I’m immediately faced with this mile-wide lake of the past. I stand at the edge, my toes digging into the sand, but the black depth gives me serious willies. That alone tells me there’s something important there, but I get frozen. It’s not the right time. I won’t have enough quiet to get in there and really do the work. I worry that I remember it all wrong. Putting it down in words would mean finding the details that float below the surface, ghostly, bloated and probably inaccurate. But reading Greil’s essay clicked a piece into place. I need to fit the details into a context wider than my own little life.

You’re thinking, well duh. And I knew this intellectually, but when I’m stuck, the things I know to be true tend to jump ship. I tend to not trust myself. I dig in deeper and hold onto nothing.

So last night and this morning, I’ve had to run for my notebook fifty times so I could jot down a few words, vapors of my past that have risen up like tendrils of mist on the surface of that big, dark lake. Tonight I’d like to strip down and dive in, write for a few hours, alone in my room with the laptop. Well…metaphorically speaking. I won’t be sitting up there at my desk, naked.

Who knows what blossoms await.

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