may still

Rain this morning, insistent. I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. A few days away from the teaching schedule and already I feel unmoored. The mind wanders to unfinished projects, conceived, but for a time abandoned. I wonder whether I’ll go back.

Reading is slow, writing is slow, everything feels like moving through waves of resistance. I kill a character off easily in my mind only to bring him back in the next fragment. Trying to keep the doubts at bay for a while, to quiet them.

I woke from bizarre vivid dreams. A desk drawer filled with wrapped cheeses. A two-day contest that involves traveling by boat. I am at a long conference table, and we are going around, one at a time for introductions, but when I try to speak, there is so much noise — some sort of machinery grinding, people talking. I leave the table.

—

I have started, for this fiftieth year, a daily morning ritual. Set up a little sacred space, arranged objects. I light a candle, find stillness. I take an object in my hands. A large round stone covered with mulberry paper. Or a small stone shaped like a heart. Attend to its properties, its weight, smoothness. Attend to the breath. I make a few notes in a small notebook. A word or two, a sentence. It may be gratitude, or it may be fear. Or a question, repeated, covering the page. I watch the candle flicker for a few moments more. And then I blow it out.

—

The winteriest of winters. Isolation. Extended darkness. We make plans for later in the year, when we might travel a bit. Rent a house in the Hudson Valley with a heated pool. Or go north, a tiny cabin in Maine or Vermont. I check fares for imaginary itineraries to Paris in the spring. We stay a month, more. Book a train through the countryside to Bezier. Through Toulouse to Biarritz then up the coast to Bourdeau. We meet friends in Berlin, in Rome, Orvieto. Just close our eyes and point to the map and go.

I remember rosemary and pine along the Via Domitia. We walked for hours. The ancient dust. The sun high and bright, the breeze, fragrant and warm. I remember lavender, wide fields of it. I remember honeysuckle profuse and wild across stone arches, across doorways, heady and sweet. Pale blue light in the early mornings over the stone roofs of the village. For weeks we lived in a dream. We thought we would be back. I suppose we may still.