lying fallow

I've had a spell, writing wise, of lying fallow, rare for me and very uncomfortable. I'm much happier when working wildly on a book, racing to get down all the paragraphs that seem to collect inside my head.

Trying to view this a necessary part of the process - allowing emptiness and space, specifically for the work in progress which for the first time, I have let sit for months in first draft.

I got back to it this week, readied for it, and finally last night leapt back into the pages. It's exciting to see the benefits of letting it be, and fascinating that in the midst of the empty space (weeks back) there was a revelation that in some ways solves many of the problems of the first draft. It answers a lot of questions posed by three writing group members who read a fair portion of the ms.

I didn't plan it this way, but it occurred to me this morning that when I looked out the window, the fields seem to be washed lightly in green. The bulbs are up, beginning to bud and blossom. Somehow my timing has gotten in sync with nature and the season, the full-tilt buzz of delight that begins underground and works its way outward.

This is by far my favorite part of the writing process - when it starts to hum and bursts out wild and untamed. The deep revision is a close second, and comes just in time to restore order to the wonderful chaos.

passages

And all the names of the tribes, the nomads of faith who walked in the monotone of the desert and saw brightness and faith and colour. The way a stone or found metal box or bone can become loved and turn eternal in a prayer. Such glory of this country she enters now and becomes part of. we die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography -- to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth as had no maps.

-from Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient


Even in old age, she recurs. I still dream about Claire at least twice a year. How amazing for a thing as vaporous as desire to survive against all the depredations of time, becoming, at its worst, a sad reminder that life mostly fails us. In some dreams she is just a fragrance. Sometimes lavender and sometimes clove and cinnamon, but also another scent dear to my heart. During those two summers, Claire had the habit of absentmindedly wiping her pen nib on her skirts, most of which were dark blue, so the only trace of her habit was the faint odor of ink around her.

-from Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons


Later evening addendum: I just discovered that Michael Ondaatje has a new novel coming out in May: Divisadero.

And, Ian McEwan has one coming out as well: On Chesil Beach.

Things to look forward to, for sure.

grisaille

It is gray today, muted and soft, though thankfully not cold. I forget until this kind of day how much brilliance of color the sun offers.

This is a day for pulling books off shelves, fingering the pages for beloved passages, listening to Loreena McKinnitt cd's, allowing the smell of maple sausages to waft through the air, better smelled than eaten, even.

A day for mucking stalls to NPR while keeping one eye skyward for rain and the other on degrees Fahrenheit so the horses don't get both wet and cold.

A day for writing novel, not query letters, and getting lost in words and phrases, pulling the power of a grisaille day into the pages.

Sometimes soft and muted has more power than brilliant sun.

the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light

I choose to be a figure in that light,
half-blotted by darkness, something moving
across that space, the color of stone
greeting the moon, yet more than stone:
a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.

-- Adrienne Rich, Twenty-One Love Poems, XXI, from The Dream of a Common Language

in search of spring

It seems to be arriving. Yesterday Keil Bay and I were both sweating after our lesson. It's been awhile since I had to sponge him after a ride!

Salina is getting a bit bossier the past few days. Monday she absolutely rebelled against the pony being in her stall while awaiting his massage therapy. Squealing and switching her tail and spinning with her ears pinned.

Cody tossing the feed bucket in the air.

Apache and Cody running and rearing like wild things in the field.

And then, this morning, look what I found:



The first daffodil! Spring is definitely here.

P/S: new sign just in - Keil Bay at the water trough using a hoof to thoroughly wet himself down before rolling! That would have been a fantastic photo but alas, I did not have the camera.