Today is the first day of the rest of my life, or of the rest of this year and the next, anyway, whichever comes first. I have a grant to go and live in a writer's retreat for the month of October, to hunker down and write a new book. You don't do it just like that, although it depends what kind of book, I guess. Anyway, this one will take, has taken, preparation, and time, time, especially; it's about age and that takes time. Aging is all about time. I have been keeping a file for at least five years comprising clippings and ideas and comments, notes to myself, references to resources, lists - oh, my - lists! Now, before I go and start writing, I must read through the file, absorbing and culling and sorting and arranging. I can't take the whole thing with me as it's far too heavy and unwieldy, and I have to thin it. Not simple. More than that, I must sort it out, break it down into folders - chapters, I guess. I need an outline, an agenda, a map, and the equivalent of recipe file cards on my computer. For other books, I have used the floor as a horizontal filing cabinet, with chapters and notes spread out across it so that, eventually, walking across the floor was like tiptoeing through a maze. This time I have to move the maze into my Little Mac so I can carry it with me. So, you see, today really is the next day of a very large chunk of time. Maybe I'll lose weight.

I'e been saying it for years now: happiness is the Sunday New York Times. And it's a good thing, too, because otherwise I might notice how alone I am. Not lonely, mind, but definitely alone. I'm very grateful to be here and healthy and to be able to think and read and write and I do NOT complain. But - you knew there is a but - I can't help but notice the silence when the buzz in my mind pauses. The awareness of my alone-ness (not loneliness and not solitude) comes from the increasing losses of friends and contemporaries. I've said before, and it's a familiar image, I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. Right, left, above below, behind and in front of me, my cohorts are being picked off. (Hah! missed me.) But I miss them. Of course, my parents are gone, and my brother, my only sibling, four years ago now, and my husband died 40 years ago. So you think I'd be used to it. Not. This past spring my first cousin, who shared the same grandfather with me, died after a long, brave, sliding fall with Alzheimer's. He was my last contemporary relative. Now I really am the last one at the top of my totem pole. I read just recently corroboration of my belief that low person on the totem pole is more powerful and relevant than the top one. No matter how good the view may be from up there, it's remote and it's the jumping off-point. There's a piece in today's NYT explaining why time seems to telescope and move too fast, the older you get. It suggests things you can do to make time go more slowly, like, do something new that isn't by rote because you have to think about it and it won't just slip automatically through your fingers and brain. Learn a new language (I'm working at Icelandic and it's hard and very slow.) I've read other helpful pieces like this, assuming one is not only lonely but without resources. Use your other hand rather than your dominant one to brush your teeth or stir your porridge. Go the hard way home - not difficult for me because I have always gotten lost very easily. And there's always Lumosity, which I'm not ready for because I have work to do. I think all this is supposed to be stimulating and comforting. Okay. I'm happy for the New York Times.