November 29, 2022
Gleanings
- A living tree died, its length bucked into logs, each one so beautiful I want them to stay in this gallery of open air, green salal, perfumed by the resin.
- How well Woolf understood: I see myself in Jacob’s bereft mother, baffled, as I have so often been baffled, by the puzzle that completely ordinary things like shoes and clothes remain, even though the person who gave them meaning is gone.
- That is to say, all the small moments, the flickers, the ordinary, the mundane, the sacred, the profane, much which goes unnoticed, none of which will ever be written down anywhere, well, except here. For years and years I’ve been searching, seeking, and all along it seems it was right in front of me … wonder. Life, all of it, you, me, them, the cat that refuses to use the litter box … miraculous. And so it is.
- But I’d been writing novels every weekday morning since 2006! What was I supposed to do with myself?Just try other creative stuff, is what I was thinking. Here’s what I did instead.
- After a while, I realized, turning down a summer’s worth of work wasn’t just about resting. Recovering from burn-out, or what have you. This was about getting back in touch with who I truly am, and never fucking letting her go again. Learning how to separate THE VOICE THAT IS YELLING WHAT I SHOULD DO, from the voice that is whispering what I love to do.
- “An attitude of gratitude was embedded in older people’s recollections of the past,” said Kavedija, “but also allowed them to think about the present in a hopeful way. A world in which one has received much goodwill from others is a different place from one in which one has experienced loss, even if the facts of life are the same.”
