He who binds himself to a joy Does the winged life destroy He who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise. —-William Blake I’ve been pining. Every day, I wake and think of some distant thing to lash myself too: PR events related to the paperback release of Rough Beauty (radio and print interviews, new website and blog, readings); an end of summer…
A reader recently called Rough Beauty—a fairy tale. She was not being kind. At first I laughed. Anyone who knows me knows I am no princess; not once have I been a damsel in distress. The course of my life has been a dirty mess, traversing the scarred landscape of family and fire, the misery of isolation and working too much for too little. I could go on, but you get the picture. And yet, I’ve…
August in the mountains and I can feel summer begin to ebb. At the prairie house, I‘d be staring down the barrel of at least two more months of way-too-hot-for-me weather, while nearly 4000 feet higher this morning’s temperature registered in the upper 40s. Already the days have cooled from what passes as scorching in late June and July—a burning, high altitude 85 degrees–and there are nights when I pull an extra comforter over the…
A month after Greg and I hauled our household 38.4 miles south and west, we are still settling in. Our couches are stuck somewhere in California and we have been walking around boxes and paint cans for weeks. Our living room serves a staging ground for unpacking and sorting, and also as the dog’s other, bigger bedroom. It’s been a month of figuring out where things will go and non-stop organizing—Doing it right, I say,…
Like a lot of people, I’ve celebrated the 4th of July for the fun, the food, the fireworks. Not today. This year I am reveling in what for me turns out to be a profound sense of liberation and there won’t be one flag or float in sight: Back in May, the artist-lover and I bought a house (a first for both of us) and just a little over two weeks ago (in a lull between…