A Reprise

"Do you know what Ashley bought Taylor this weekend? Two hamsters. Do you know how to say no to kids? No." Two hamsters. Ashley is so lucky.

Something about the slant of light and my dress and shoes and the after work reminded me of going to Summer Party on my lunch break five years ago. It was so glorious to be out of the office in there for an hour. It was always wonderful, always gracious. Even though Target is a little out of the way on my way home I wanted to reconsider storage cubes for nesting boxes, among other things. This moment to take a breath is pure and free life. It must be the light, it is so warm.

Even when I don't believe I still believe.

Living quietly, thinking and not producing, instead working and making my life's thesis. Some new things. I found two perfect, small cafe au lait colored eggs in the crook of one of the trees in the front yard. Thank you to whoever laid those. I know they have another stash elsewhere, and I will find it. I began gardening again this weekend. Between my neglect and the sun's scorching heat my earlier efforts were reduced to nothing. The summer has very few survivors. Almost certainly my cocoa rose, maybe the blue girl rose and gardenia. And I am traveling with handkerchief. I am still having a hard time carrying a thermos. But I thought I would make another small effort, and it's vintage, of course.

  From Anton Cemetery in Anton, Texas, close to the New Mexico border.

The sun burned the ground and my skin and the steel signs. It bleached all it touched, and the empty shells of buildings consisted of slender lumber that trembled in the wind like bones. On the ground before me a snake shuddered, the only inhabitant of this lonely place where the wind soughed through the buildings. In this place, we were as welcome as we were unwelcome.    I was standing on the very last stretch of Texas, but the buildings represented the style of New Mexico. The walls were between one and two feet thick, formed of clay, and as I stood on the threshold, a cold breeze drifted toward me. I could not tell anything about the debris in the buildings. I guessed-a cigarette machine, a gambling device? I know a little about what dwells on the outskirts of society. But whatever happened here I could not tell. Perhaps even fifty years was enough to remove all traces of recognition. What had once been a post office, and a laundromat, were piles of rubble fal...

I'm sorry to have frightened you. Well, my blog does tend to the gothic, so you never know when you're going to see a dusky picture of me and my cockatiel. Unfortunately he considers my iPhone a rival and is now really mad. He also gets very cranky at night, so going to put us both to bed. I am not yet caught up on sleep since last week's crunch.

"A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life." - Virginia Woolf As I near the end of Faith and Feminism, I have more questions than when I started. But I am learning that questions are better guides than answers. My first question is, Where does my essential energy lie? And within that, all these uncomfortable barbs and doubts needle my mind. I no longer have the deep visionary desire to write as I once did. I am not wrought with ambition to see my name in print. I no longer care if it ever is. I see my lack of notice from the world as good because I am not influenced by what others see in me, or my imagined perception of this, before I am secure enough to deal with something like that as a writer with an audience who receives many comments. My feelings about writing books have changed from the burning need to write, as an adolescent, to the driving need to be in print, whatever I wrote, as a college student, to a deep reluctance to submit anything, for fear...