Have been working and...

OK, so I skived off (a Scottish term for playing hooky) for the past week, going out of town and having a fabulous time, but I did do some writing before I left, and I am working on more now. This summer is incredibly ripe with new and old experiences, much grist for the mill. This woman is rarin' to go now! I am also in the middle of four books (bad planning on my part) so it's a tussle between reading and writing. One novel, and three nonfiction. Just finished Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men." Full of unremitting violence, but still the tenderness and incredibly wonderful writing which drew me to him when I read his Border Trilogy. The man knows how to make you love his characters and then wrench them away from you when you least expect it. And his descriptions of setting are so vivid that you can see the action clearly, in all the heat and the dust.

OK, onto the next project. I mean it this time! I intend to make full use of my remaining three and half weeks of summer before I return to the grindstone on August 23.

It's been a long time...

... since I posted, or even since I visited blogland. I returned from Britain almost two weeks ago, yet have not felt moved to stop by, and am not sure why, but finally here I am.

Haven't written much either, too many experiences rumbling around in my head. And not a lot of quiet time. Or maybe too much. And it's damn hot!!

I want to write about a conversation I had with an old friend, wherein we each discovered something new about our relationship in high school. I want to write about my mother, older, more confused, almost completely immobile. I want to write about how I feel I no longer belong in the country of my birth. I want to write about my summer and my joy at returning to my home in the US.

There are days when the words just flow. There are others (such as now) when they desert me and I feel like I am walking through a sterile tundra, searching in vain for some sign of fertility. It's a mindset, I think. Even now, as I write about it, I feel some loosening. This is a good thing. I think that maybe up ahead there is some greenery, and I want to investigate. I'm off, and hope to return soon with something more than these vague meanderings.