This is my last day in The Stegner House , October 28. Please note. I have come up with, or dredged out, the first draft of a new book. I'll let it cool and see what I have. First drafts are like gouging out your bone marrow - especially with plays - but after that it takes patience and Zen to do the rewrites. You know that Zen saying: if you meet oh, who? who is it you meet? I have to check that - anyway, if you meet it/him you're supposed to kill it, because it's false. This is not what I intended to say. I just want to say á bientôt. It's a trek back to Toronto and I'll be without WIFI for four days. Not sure if I'll plug in on the fifth day when I arrive home. The tramlines are going to start running again and I may not get to Google or Safari or any of my other lines. So it will be a while. Will you miss me? Not bloody likely. POSTNOTE; I looked it up. It is the Buddha, it is the Buddha! I thought it was but I hesitated to say it. So kill your darling when you see it. That's good advice to writers who tend to fall in love with their own purple prose. Buddhism is supposed to be a path to enlightenment. - not THE way, as I understand it, but a way. Which takes me to Kahlil Gibran: "Say not that you have found the path of the soul; say you have found the soul on a path." Something like that. I'm not going to look it up. Do I have to do all the work? It's in "The Prophet".

I actually wrote this on my last morning in the house before I was out of range on the bus, in the B&B, on the train, before I got home to my very own WIFI. I don't know why the date kept changing. This is old stuff. Anon, anon.

Home again home again jiggety jig. It took longer than I expected to return and I have not yet achieved full re-entry. Too many things to do and atone for after such a long absence . First, I am happy to tell you that the boxelder bugs did not stow away in any of my papers or clothes or bags. They were getting very uppity before I left and they were giving me a - not angst exactly, but a kind of a worry? - anyway, they did not come with me. Second, the decompression chamber of the train was as valuable coming home as going away. I was tired, also hungry and enjoyed resting and being pampered. I also had the time to read my book to see how it looks and to figure out what's missing. Drop it in the meat grinder and see what churns out. Third, I'm working very hard each day, physically, what with laundry and grocery shopping and starting to cook again, I mean cook, not just for me but for other people. I feel sort of numb, though. Something is happening down there in the meat grinder and I have to see what's going on. Soon.

Hey, I'm swimming again and I'm blogging again. Let's get on with it.