frozen solid

This is about how cold it feels out there today. Horses in blankets, cats by the woodstove, corgyn sticking close to their people.

The crows were in full force in the front field but maddeningly took off when I appeared oh so quietly through the front door. Daughter says "just deal with the fact that they don't want their picture taken!"

Ha. I guess I should.

forgotten pumpkin

Winter continues, after a weekend of respite. The horses stayed in blankets all day long, and even though the sun was bright, the ice I removed from the water tubs is still lying broken on the ground.

Taking a walk outside today, listening to the ground crunch beneath my feet, I noted the forgotten pumpkin lying at the woods' edge. It made me think of autumn - all the color and wonder now cast aside for this colder season.

opening lines

This is a blatant writing exercise designed to build up some steam for tonight's writing session, in which I officially return to The Schedule, on Sunday evening as opposed to Monday morning, simply because tonight's task is the more enchanting one.

Ten books from a nearby shelf, all novels. Author/title/opening sentence.

I find these kinds of things fascinating. If you're reading this and not a writer, it might be less so, but I hope it captures your fancy in some unexpected way.

James Salter - A Sport and a Pastime: "September. It seems these luminous days will never end."

Ian McEwan - Atonement - "The play -- for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper -- was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch."

A.S. Byatt - Possession - "The book was thick and black and covered with dust."

Michael Cunningham - The Hours - "She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather."

Charles Frazier - Thirteen Moons - "There is no scatheless rapture."

Charles Frazier - Cold Mountain - "At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring."

Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient - "She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance."

Janet Fitch - Paint It Black - "Cold numbed the tip of Josie Tyrrell's nose and her ass, just outside the reach of the studio space heater."

Janet Fitch - White Oleander - "The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw."

Heidi Julavits - The Mineral Palace - "As soon as the Ford Touring Car crossed the St. Paul city limits on April 20, 1934 ("You Are Leaving St. Paul, Minn., Home of the Inlagd Sill Herring Festival, Please Visit Us Again"), and passed into the great, square-upon-square expanse of the surrounding farmland, Bena jotted down the odometer reading with the golf pencil she kept in the ashtray: 5.434."

winter

Today was one of those very cold, quiet mornings that seemed almost holy. The horses walked slowly up the hill and I realized their steps were tentative because the ground was frozen hard beneath their hooves, especially odd, I imagine, after these weeks of mucky earth that gave way up to their fetlocks in some places.

I fed breakfast and removed blankets amid soft snorts and the quiet crunch of feed, and then went out to open the back field, throw hay, and check water tubs.



Evidence of winter. The sheet in the back field's trough was solid and broke into a perfect puzzle.

The trough in the paddock had already been broken early this morning, and the puzzle pieces were still intact, pieces of green pressed beneath like specimens under glass.



I sat out and watched for a bit as the horses methodically stopped by the trough, drank, and then found the hay piles. Mid-morning in winter and all is just fine in this little corner of the world.

footprints from my novel