Saturday, August 18, 2012

fizzy


You got twelve little plants staring at you for several days now, twelve orphan plants and you’re gonna say – sorry, my back is out? Of course not. You’re going to get off your high writing horse and pick up that hand spade and start digging.

But not right away.

I wake up and I say to Ed – today I have bills to pay, a farmhouse to clean, stuff to plant and a book to write. Which should I do first?
He says – you’re on a roll. Get writing.

But breakfast is back in the game plan. I’m at my best if we have a few minutes over a morning meal. So we have the morning meal.


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And a quick walk through the flower beds.


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And then -- back to my text.

Later, I do break. For an hour. My daughter and I shop the market on Saturdays and this is a routine I wont put aside.


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She’s radiant, my girl is. One month to a wedding, the sun’s shining,  market flowers are cheap and plentiful – she is in that wonderful frame where every color is even more brilliant than it seems.


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I can understand that. I visit that frame now and then myself.


She’s off...


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...and I return home. 



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...For a hefty dose of writing. No Paul’s, no tennis, no bike ride. Just me on the porch with my laptop. No interruptions.

...Until evening and then the guilt about the little orphan roses seeps in and back pain or no back pain I decide to give it a go. I’m good for ten out of twelve little roses. May they thrive.


And now I turn to dinner. It has to include tomatoes. We’re brimming with them and both Ed and I brought in a new haul this evening, so tomatoes it is: a salad with five very different types of tomatoes, and, too, eggs, and capers, and blue cheese, and because I want to make it just a notch special, I open my precious tin of sardines (yes, sardines) from France. Why anyone would bring back a tin of sardines from France may puzzle you, but when you're at a market there and vendors are showing off their sardines and they're cheap and in olive oil, you say -- why not. [Question for you: do you know how many sardines there are in this French can of sardines? Answer: Two. Sardine class indeed!]


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So life is good. No, better than that: effervescent. And the sun continues to shine and I’m on an edit now and I already know what my next book project will be.

4 comments:

  1. The photo of the rainbow umbrella with leaf shadow and the woman with sunflowers below it is magic.

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  2. HKatz: as always, thank you!

    regan: it'll be the one that'll sell! :) (Because the topic is in that league.)
    I'm somewhat traumatized in writing about things and people that I know because most anyone would mind and not like being picked to pieces, even in okay ways, even without recognizable features. Which would be difficult anyway because I don't care for writing fiction. The current book is different: it concerns people who mostly are no longer in my life. And the next book (actually, I have two in mind!) will be about people whom I know give me full freedom to do and write as I please. So that's next.

    In case it's not obvious, I really like to write (and read!) books.

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  3. How big is this tin that holds only two sardines? :-)

    Next month I finally have an awards ticket (well, partly) on Air France and find I am about to have a seat in Premium Voyageur and will be permitted to check two bags (never mind I would not be able to wrestle two bags around in buses and hotels and trains, and a switch from CDG to Orly). I may never want to go back to sardine class.

    At the current pace, may we have your book another year sooner?

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