If you are a musician, a composer and a player of an instrument for example, what part of your work is more enjoyable -- the composition or the performance? Do you toil with a sheet of music and perk up when you play it for an audience? It seems to me I've read too many stories of the rough life of a musician going on tour. You remember the lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel's Homeward Bound? (What? You dont know it? ... and each town looks the same to me, the movies and the factories, and every strangers face I see reminds me that I long to be homeward bound...) Unless you're Lady Gaga or some famous singer person, it seems that it's a miserable existence: endless "reasonably priced" (meaning uninspired) hotels and motels where you just don't care about the stains on the carpet or the minibar supplies anymore. You try hard not to hear the people laughing in the room next door. You sleep, you get up and you do it again and again, all year long. That's called being successful. No bookings means you're staying home and wondering why no one likes your music. That can't be fun. Or is it that the performance itself gives you such a thrill that it's all worth it?
It seems book writers face a similar dilemma: do you go on book tours? I read Ann Patchett's memoir-ish book and it seemed her readings had her trotting to those "reasonably priced" hotels, as she toured bookstore after bookstore, sometimes to large audiences but also to small ones, reading, signing, smiling, reading, signing, smiling. Again, she is a total success story. Writing is her job and she is an absolutely stellar author person and still I thought to myself -- book tours and promotions sound absolutely awful to me. I wonder if, in all honesty, she even likes them?
For me, there is no question here: I like the writing part. If I ever do readings, deep down I'll be thinking -- I'm sure glad I'm not famous and that I can decide where to read and more importantly, if to read. Publicity is definitely not fun and I'm glad that at least there is someone who has been charged with doing a good bit of that work for me (in some small amount).
My Great Writing Project is really coming to an end and isn't that just.... well, great!
In other news -- I'm paying the price for working so hard outside. I got my first tick. In the scalp. I'm not surprised. The field in back of the barn is rarely visited by the cheepers and frequently visited by all sorts of wildlife. You're sitting on the ground just begging for some critter to jump on you! Ah well, it was an early catch. When I fired off a note to my friend in Michigan (who is both an outdoor sportswoman and a terrific gardener), she sent back a chuckling email: [my husband] has had 7 so far, me 1, two in the house-1 on the wall and 1 on the sofa. Okay fine. My one seems puny! Tis the season after all.
The weather is still a tiny bit cool, but we're getting to the days that are sunny and warm. They nearly always hit us in the middle of May. Ed and I will be planting our 100 tomatoes this Sunday. We do not expect cool nights anymore. It very much looks like an early tomato season after all.
Breakfast. With cranberry black walnut bread, from our Fitchburg Farmers Market (which started up this week!). A guy grows his own black walnuts and spends the winter shelling them. I mean, a labor of love.
Lots of Zoom calls and emails, mostly about the Great Writing Project.
And finally, I get to pick up Snowdrop.
We pause by the pond by her school: so many swans! (Are they swans?? They are not: a subsequent check tells me they are American White Pelicans. I didn't think we were on a Pelican migration path, but apparently we just make it! Did you know these birds eat more than four pounds of fish per day? We watch them dive for it. And did you know that this bird has the second largest wingspan of any North American bird, after the California Condor? Amazing! Right across the road from Snowdrop's school.)
It's a treat to retreat into her world for the afternoon. It's warm enough for Snowdrop to want to stay outside. At the next door playground.
(this one is her hands down favorite!)
How nimble a young child is! I tell her that I used to be athletic when I was her age, but living smack in the middle of Manhattan gave me few outdoor choices. A skateboard along a sidewalk. That's it. And our school playground? A slab of concrete between two tall buildings.
(Back at the farmette...)
(Cherries? Cherries. From the US, though certainly not from the Midwest!)
(Trying to, but never succeeding in annoying Ed...)
And the boys back home? Well, Sparrow is explaining to me something about the nose...
...and Sandpiper looks questioningly at me to see if I perhaps came with something amounting to a slice of cake or perhaps peanut butter puffs. (I did not.)
Evening: you do not want to know what dinner looked like here, at the farmhouse. It was totally disgraceful in my book and absolutely perfect according to Ed. Salads, yes those. And then -- reheated slices of a reheated pizza from yesterday and the day before for Ed, and fried eggs tossed on top of the salad for me. I will return to real cooking. Honestly I will. Just possibly not this week, when the grandkids, the GWP and the garden are using up as much of my bandwidth as I appear to have in me these days.
But with so much love!
