Another first, a significant one. The nicest thing about July First is that there are two whole months of summer ahead of us. I plan to clock a lot of balcony time, with lovely work to do. I was telling someone about the files and clippings and notes and ideas I have been collecting for about five (more) years and my hope to get through them all this summer, reduce them to file cards, chapter headings, outlines, and so on. Virtual ones, some of it, to stash in my hard drive and elsewhere, but lots and lots of paper, too. Paper is very comforting, and it doesn't disappear if you press the wrong button. Anyway, this person looked at me in horror and said, "You like that?1" Yes, I do. I love paper. I love words. I love ideas. How could I not like that? This will all be in preparation for my writing retreat in Saskatchewan in October. It's nice to have a goal and a deadline. On the other hand, whatever happened to the vast amounts of leisure I thought I would be wallowing in by the time I was this age? Not there, not here, not yet. I guess I'll have to live a little longer.
where does the time go?
You may well ask. I've been VERY busy, trying to finish a book so I can start the prep on another one. I have a penultimate draft, I think. All it takes is time. Actually, it takes more than that but time is what is negotiable and disappears. So here I am, sticking my head above the - - it's not ground, it's a bog - above the bog, taking a sighting, figuring out where to go from here. Not that I haven't seen or thought a few things. By the end of the day, no, by late afternoon, my head is foggy and my brain is mushy but I can't go to sleep and I can't go out because I'm a prisoner of my project and because I'm too physically tired. So I read and think, in a loopy way. One night I read Jane Gardam's new book "Last Friends". Delicious. Must re-read the other two in the trilogy ("Old Filth" and "The Man in the Wooden Hat"). One night I re-read the book I'm working on and put it into reasonable pagination, set up for fair copy. (Still messed up in one section of different drafts, have to check for repetition - always a danger with computers, less so with physical cut-and-paste.) Watched a couple of old movies and welcomed the commercials because I read stuff, like Candace Savage's "The Geography of Blood", related to the place where I'm going to hibernate in October: Eastend, Saskatchewan. And a book about happiness, very Keynesian. As for the old movies, they are time machines, both disappointments and revelations.When I look in the mirror and try to remember who this old person is, I think I'm the only one who has changed. Not so. Actors in old movies are the best reminders we have about aging. Where does the time go? Right now, it's gone for the nonce and I'm going swimming.